5 - Send Events to SAP Build Process Automation

A REST delivery point (RDP) is a provisioned object on an event broker service that facilitates message delivery to REST consumers. The RDP can be bound to message queues to deliver messages from those queues to REST consumers. The RDP maintains a list of REST consumers, which are identified by their remote connection information.

For this tutorial, we will use the APJ-IN-Broker event broker service and we will reuse the queue we created in the previous tutorial: EDP_BP_Created_[SAPCommunityDisplayName].

This queue is subscribed to the default/sap.s4/S4D/ce/cust/ext/codejam/ZBUSINESSPARTNER/Created/v1/[SAPCommunityDisplayName] topic, where the events for the BusinessPartner object created in the simulated SAP S/4HANA Cloud are being published.

Now that we have our queue, we are ready to create a REST Delivery Point (RDP) to forward messages from the EDP_BP_Created_[SAPCommunityDisplayName] queue to a REST consumer.

1. Inside the APJ-IN-Broker service broker, click Open Broker Manager.

2. Click Clients on the left-side menu.

   Click REST.

   

3. Click + REST Delivery Point.

   

   Enter a name, EDP-SBPA-BPCreated-[SAPCommunityDisplayName], (replacing [SAPCommunityDisplayName] with your SAP Community display name).

   

   Click Create.

   A simple configuration form will appear. No need to modify anything here – Do not enable the RDP yet, that is, leave the toggle button off.

   Click Apply.

   

4. Once created, go to the RDP details page by clicking on the name of the RDP.

   

   You will see that there isn’t much here yet, as we haven’t configured the REST consumer details. We will do this now.

   

Now that we’ve created a REST Delivery Point, we have to specify where we want events sent.

1. Navigate to the REST Consumers tab.

2. Click + REST Consumer, and enter the name SBPA_[SAPCommunityDisplayName], (replacing [SAPCommunityDisplayName] with your SAP Community display name)

   Click Create.

   

   A configuration form will be displayed.

3. Enter the details from the SAP Build Process Automation service key created as part of the prerequisites (you downloaded the key file).

   IMPORTANT: Do not enable the REST Consumer yet – leave the toggle button off.

   Enter the following:

   Field	Value
   Host	Value from service key .endpoints.api, e.g.spa-api-gateway-bpi-us-prod.cfapps.[region].hana.ondemand.com
   Port	443
   HTTP Method	POST
   TLS Enabled	Yes
   Authentication Scheme	OAuth 2.0 Client Credentials
   Client ID	Value from service key .uaa.clientid, e.g. sb-VQ18I1VS-3226-5LF1-JVWV-760D08FHP857-3ok534d4-8562-632j-436w-0j5b0n8r4d0l!b139588 | eventing-xsuaa-broker!b####
   Client Secret	Value from service key .uaa.clientsecret
   Token Endpoint URL	Concatenate the value from service key .uaa.url, e.g. https://[host].authentication.[region].hana.ondemand.com, and /oauth/token
   Token Expiry Default	3600

4. Click Apply.

   

The newly created REST consumer will be listed in the REST Consumers tab. Now we need to configure the queue that we will bind to our RDP. Events in this queue will be forwarded.

1. Navigate to the Queue Bindings tab.

2. Click + Queue Binding.

   Select the queue you previously created, named EDP_BP_Created_[SAPCommunityDisplayName] but with your SAP Community display name.

   

3. Click Create.

4. A simple configuration form will be displayed.

   In the Post Request Target field, you need to enter the path where we can send events to SAP Build Process Automation (/internal/be/v1/events). Notice that you will need to include the / at the beginning of the value.

   Enter the following details:

   Field	Value
   Post Request Target	/internal/be/v1/events
   Request Target Evaluation	None
   Replace Target Authority	No

   Click Apply.

   

The newly created queue binding will be listed in the Queue Bindings tab. Now we need to configure a request header that is required by SAP Build Process Automation.

1. In the Queue Bindings tab, select your queue binding.

   

2. Navigate to the Request Headers tab.

   

3. You will create 2 headers.

   For each, you will click + Request Header, enter the header name, then the header value, and then click Apply.

   Create the following headers:

   Header Name	Header Value
   Content-Type	application/cloudevents+json
   WebHook-Request-Origin	aem

   

Now that we’ve created the request headers, we are ready to enable the REST consumer and the RDP.

We’ve configured the REST consumer and the queue binding, we can enable the REST consumer and the RDP.

First, let’s see all the objects that we’ve configured.

1. Navigate back to the main page for your RDP.

   Select the Summary tab. Here you will see all the objects and their status. Notice that the only object in an operational state is the queue we created at the beginning of the exercise.

   

2. Navigate to the REST Consumers tab, and click the name of your REST consumer, something like SBPA_[SAPCommunityDisplayName].

   

3. Click Edit on the top right.

   

   Enable the REST consumer by toggling the Enabled setting.

   Click Apply.

   Now we are ready to enable our RDP.

4. Navigate back to the main page for your RDP.

   Select the Summary tab.

5. Click on the Connector / RDP, named EDP-SBPA-BPCreated-[SAPCommunityDisplayName], but with your SAP Community display name.

   Click Edit on the top right, and enable the RDP by toggling the Enabled setting.

   Click the Apply button.

   Once we enable the RDP, if we navigate to the Summary tab, we should see that all the objects are in an operational state.

   

6. Now, go to the simulated SAP S/4HANA Cloud system and create a Business Partner.

   This will trigger a Business Partner event which you will receive in your queue.

   Check that the EDP_BP_Created_[SAPCommunityDisplayName] queue (inside your RDP) is accumulating messages.

   

   .

   Also, you can check the REST Consumer configured. In the stats tab of the REST consumer, you will see the number of messages processed.

   

As an alternative, you can also check the Business Event being received in SAP Build Process Automation. In the SAP Build Process Automation tenant, navigate to Monitoring > Acquired Events > Business Events. The event should be listed there.

This tutorial completed all the configuration required on the AEM side. We achieved quite a few things in AEM:

1. Familiarized ourselves with different parts of AEM.
2. Connected to an event broker service.
3. Sent and received events using the Try Me feature available in AEM.
4. Defined a queue.
5. Added subscriptions to a queue.
6. Created a REST Delivery Point.
7. Defined an RDP REST Consumer, where we configured the details of our SAP Build Process Automation tenant.
8. Bound a queue to our RDP.
9. Added request headers to the queue binding.
10. Enabled it all.

In this tutorial, we have learned how to create a REST Delivery Point (RDP) to forward messages from a queue to a REST consumer. We used OAuth 2.0 authentication to securely deliver events to SAP Build Process Automation. Now we know a mechanism to enable systems that expose REST endpoints to “react” to events produced by an event broker service.

• Managing REST Delivery Points - link
• REST Consumer Authentication Schemes - link
• Integration with Advanced Mesh Service Plan for Service Cloud - link

Things to Ponder

1. What if you would need to transform or enrich the message before sending it to the REST consumer? How would you do it?
2. Can you think of a system within your company that exposes REST endpoints and could benefit from being part of an event-driven architecture?