Introducing SAP API Management

SAP API Management is a solution that maps the entire life cycle of an API.

Building APIs

API portal is an application that provides a common platform for API designers to define and publish APIs. Every API Management customer is provided with their own API portal application in the cloud. The API portal offers capabilities to configure systems, build and publish APIs, analyze and test APIs.

Publishing APIs

A Product is a bundle of APIs. It contains metadata specific to your business for monitoring or analytics. For example, all APIs related to CRM can be bundled as one CRM Product. Instead of publishing APIs individually, it is easier to bundle related APIs together as a Product and publish it. After including the required APIs to a Product, the Product is published to the catalog, where the Product is available for application developers.

Analyzing APIs

API Management provides comprehensive analytics capabilities to understand the various patterns of API consumption. The API Analytics server uses the runtime data of the APIs to analyze the information. The runtime data is gathered, analyzed, and displayed as charts, headers, and key performance indicators (KPIs).

Consuming APIs

API Business Hub Enterprise is an application that provides a common platform for application developers to consume APIs. Every API Management customer is provided with their own API Business Hub Enterprise application in the cloud. The API Business Hub Enterprise offers capabilities to onboard application developers, explore and test APIs, create and subscribe to applications.

Monetizing APIs

SAP API Management provides a monetization feature to all API providers to generate revenue on the use of APIs. As an API admin, you can create a rate plan and attach a rate plan to a Product in the API Portal and publish the product in the API Business Hub Enterprise.

You can also view bill details of each developer in the API Portal. As an application developer, in the API Business Hub Enterprise, you can create an application and add products to the application. Based on the product usage, you can view the corresponding bill details.

Discover API Packages

In API Management, you can discover API Management platform supported API packages available in the SAP Business Accelerator Hub on the API Portal.

API Designer

Model APIs using the API designer. The API designer is based on the OpenAPI Specification (OAS) standard, which is an open source collaborative project. The API designer allows you to seamlessly create and edit APIs, and view its corresponding documentation in a single window frame. It has rich inbuilt capabilities, which cannot be limited to conversion of APIs from one format to another (for example, from RAML to YAML, JSON to YAML, and vice versa), generate server and client stubs, download API specifications, and so on. The OpenAPI specification, which is created by the API designer, can be published as APIs on the SAP Business Accelerator Hub.

The relevant use cases are as follows.

Enterprise Digital Apps

Build Enterprise Digital Apps for employees (Field Sales/Services/Support), customers, and partners.

Real-time API Integrations

Share enterprise data from data lakes, business systems to suppliers, partners, and customers. Expose enterprise transactions and processes as APIs for suppliers and customers.

Enterprise Microservices

Build and manage API-first microservices. Enable DevOps of microservices.

For all subsequent work in SAP API Management, you need the APIPortal.Administrator role collection. An overview of the total available roles can be found in the second link under Resources.

The following resources can be found on the SAP Help Portal:

• Overview Page SAP API Management
• Assignment of User Roles

With API management, the entire life cycle of an API can be mapped. It begins with the creation, publication, and maintenance over the entire term. In an API first architecture, API management is the central building block and is used in every specific use case of a customer.