1. Policy-oriented Enterprise Management for SAP Business Modeling
Jens Lemcke Ph.D. Student, SAP Labs, LLC
Palo Alto, August 2007
Contains confidential slides.

2. Overview Data Solution Processes My internship contribution Situation
Complex relationships in enterprise data model based on business policies
Change of a business policy
Potentially incompatible with existing data (introducing inconsistency)
Potential problems
New data added do not reflect business policies
Ambiguous semantic of data due to lack of conformance with the model
Solution
Explicate business policies of an enterprise
Use computational logics to consistently handle policy-oriented enterprise
Processes
Situation
Many business processes in one company, each addressing a unique business goal
Business processes encode business policies, e.g., code of business conduct of that company
Change of a business policy
Potentially affects many business processes, these must be adapted appropriately
Potential problems
People forget to adapt certain business processes
Process adaptation is not appropriate to the new policies
My internship contribution
Make SAP accessible for computational logics

3. Policy-oriented Enterprise Management
SAP Business Modeling
Transformation of SAP Models

4. Enterprise Management
Business data management
Maintenance, analysis, reporting
Business process management
Design, execution, monitoring
What to consider when maintaining business data
Compliance with data model, i.e., dependencies between data objects, for example, you cannot book a room twice for the same time
What to consider when designing a new business process
Business policies (regulations)
Business goal (objective)
Implicitly: the “normal” initial situation
Exceptional initial situations
Exceptions during process execution
Policies
1. …
2. …
3. …
Goals
1. …
2. …
3. …
Execution1
Execution4
Execution5
Initial Situations
1. …
2. …
3. …
Execution3
Exceptions
1. …
2. …
3. …
Execution2
Thinking
Programming
Workflow1
Workflow2

5. Policy-oriented Enterprise Management
A new paradigm to enterprise management
Explication of underlying business constraints and user’s goals
Shift from programming to specification
Probably no reduction of effort, but reduction of inconsistency
Benefits
Business data management
Assuring data consistency
Business process management
Generate process instances instead of workflows
Semi-automatically design process instances respecting company conventions
Execute processes following company regulations
Monitor exceptional behavior and react appropriately
Policies
1. …
2. …
3. …
Goals
1. …
2. …
3. …
Company’s data base
Current Situation
Exception
Goal
Plan for execution
Specifications
Specifying
Generating

6. Policy-oriented Enterprise Management System

7. Consequences Objective The need
Explication strongly requires meta data
Objective
Collect as much meta data as possible from existing SAP environment

8. Policy-oriented Enterprise Management
SAP Business Modeling
Transformation of SAP Models

9. Business Modeling with SAP Business Model
Process component
Is the basic concept of process modeling in business process platform
Tracks one facet of a business processes, e.g., customer invoicing
State persisted in business object instances, e.g. sales order processing contains sales order
 Group business objects (= each business object in at most one process component)
Communicate with other process components via Web service calls
process component
business object
SAP confidential

10. Business Process Modeling with SAP Business Model
Main processes of the application platform
Implicitly defined through business object states and process agents
For example, sales order process is capable to trigger shipment process
Bundled content for different applications
Transactions on top of the application platform
For example, make-to-order processing in ERP
Customer’s configuration
Customize the bundled content
For example, input master data, i.e., we have Best Tire and Rubber as a supplier
Customer’s own development
Composite apps, additional process components, etc.
For example, we have a legacy payroll system
User’s ad-hoc processes
Guided procedures
For example, John needs a credibility report from financials before he can accept Dave’s personal check
Result of process
synthesis

11. Policy-oriented Enterprise Management
SAP Business Modeling
Transformation of SAP Models

12. SAP Business Model Entities
Static data
Business object meta model
Valid structure of business objects in general
For example, business object has business object nodes
Business object model
Specific sets of business objects
For example, sales order consists of items
Data type model
Properties of business object nodes
For example, sales order has a filing time
Static behavior
Status & action model
Available actions during lifetime of a business object node
For example, accept sales order line item only when available to promise
Web service interface model
External operations of business objects
For example, a sales order can be create based on a purchase order
Process agent
Communication between business objects
For example, trigger shipment if order was accepted
Dynamic data
Business object instance
State of the running business
For example, there is a sales order from Dave filed on 8/24/2007

13. SAP Business Model Data Sources
Static data
Business object meta model
System: Enterprise SOA documentation
Source: Presentation slides
Business object model
System: SAP XI 7.10
Source: ESF façade API
Data type model
Static behavior
Status & action model
System: A1S machine
Source: Invoke ABAP object methods
Web service interface model
System: SAP XI 7.10
Source: ESF façade API
Process agent
Source: Examine ABAP code
Dynamics
Business object instance
System: A1S machine
Source: BQL queries
Unknown how
To handle
Transform‘n unknown,
Source accessible
Transform‘n known,
Access unknown
Transform‘n known,
Source accessible
done

14. Business Object Meta Model Transformation Example
Generics
classes
(isa class class) (atr class atr) (rng atr class)
Classes
business object node
(isa BON class)
subclass hierarchy
(sbc BO BON)
Attributes
association subrelation (relation to complex type, existence dependency)
(sbr aso atr) (atr BON aso) (rng aso BON)
Read: (Predicate Subject Object)
e.g., Jens is-a PhD-Student. becomes (is-a Jens PhD-Student)

15. Business Object Model Transformation Example
Business objects
sales order business object
(sbc salesorder BO)
party business object
(sbc party BO)
Business object nodes
salesorder-party business object node
(sbc salesorder-party BON)
Associations
sales order business object node associations
(aso salesorder salesorder.buyerparty) (rng salesorder.buyerparty salesorder-party)
(aso salesorder salesorder.sellerparty) (rng salesorder.sellerparty salesorder-party)
party business object node associations
(aso salesorder-party salesorder-party.party) (rng salesorder-party.party party)

16. Business Object Instance Transformation Example (BONs)
Business object instances
sales order business object instances
(isa so1 salesorder)
party business object instances
(isa p1 party)
(isa p2 party)
Business object node instances
salesorder-party business object node instances
(isa so1.bp1 salesorder-party)
(isa so1.sp1 salesorder-party)
Concrete associations
concrete sales order business object node associations
(salesorder.buyerparty so1 so1.bp1)
(salesorder.sellerparty so1 so1.sp1)
concrete party business object node associations
(salesorder-party so1.bp1 p1)
(salesorder-party so1.sp1 p2)

17. Business Object Instance Transformation Example (GDTs)
Classes
global data type
(isa GDT class)
subclass hierarchy
(sbc CDT GDT)
Data types
datetime core data type
(sbc datetime CDT)
Attributes
‘contains’ subrelation
(sbr cns atr) (atr BON cns) (rng cns GDT)
Contained data types
sales order business object node contained data tyes
(cns salesorder salesorder.date_time) (rng salesorder.date_time datetime)
Concrete contained data
concrete sales order business object node contained data types
(salesorder.date_time so1 ‘7/10/07’)

18. Conclusions & Future Work
Policy-oriented enterprise management
Allows to specify business policies rather than hiding them in ABAP code
Can enforce the compliance of business data and processes with the policies
The current enterprise SOA initiative
Involves more modeling and thus is a good way in the right direction
Is very complicated to access programmatically
Does not provide models for all entities needed
Policy-oriented enterprise management can manage a business
Future Work
Refine policy-oriented enterprise management system
Find a way to extract specifications of process agents
Improve user experience
Explore simulation capabilities
That is, change a policy and see the conflicts this would produce

19. E-Mail-Address: j.lemcke@sap.com
Further Information
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