One of the best parts about attending The Mastering Technologies events is that you learn there are many ways to skin a cat…(no cats were harmed in the writing of this blog post J). When I attended the track sessions through the two day event, this was definitely borne out.

Before You Speed Through the Gateway Come to REST with the ADL - Nigel James, SAP Mentor

SAP mentor Nigel James presented another way to get data out of SAP in a RESTful manner using the Alternative Dispatcher Layer a.k.a "Awesome Dispatcher Layer". This is a project developed by DJ Adams and is made available on SAP Code Exchange (more on that in a second). It is a very lightweight layer that can return XML or JSON. You can get Nigel's presentation here: http://www.slideshare.net/squarecloud/alternative-dispatcher-layer-overview-12170192 So if you don't want to go down the Gateway path check out the ADL it just be the right tool for the job at hand.

REST: So What’s It All About? - Sascha Wenninger, Australia Post

I have to say this was possibly my favourite session of the entire event. Sascha gave a great introduction to REST I highly recommend that you check out this session here: http://www.slideshare.net/sufw

This is not really an easy topic to present and Sascha did a great job, REST or RESTful architectures are an important part of SAP’s strategy to free the data that is locked in SAP systems and it is particularly important for getting this data onto mobile devices. I highly recommend that you check out the presentation.

The take away that I got from these presentations is that REST underpins new architectures in SAP. I have provided links to the two architecture presentations and I really hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

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