How can NetWeaver help in migrating an IT Infrastructure to SOA?

How can NetWeaver help in migrating an IT Infrastructure to SOA?

How can NetWeaver help in migrating an IT Infrastructure to SOA? Are there any patterns? Can SOA service have a Graphic User Interface?

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This is a complex and sincere question. NetWeaver is SAP's strategy that forms the basics for SOA transition and with the upcoming SAP ESA we will see one of the strongest message handling and processing frameworks in the market. But that is future. Expect some announcements on Sapphire and TechEd, but to see the product we will still have to be patient. Currently, XI is the only real SOA tool from SAP. However, contrary to many other application vendors, we can safely say that nearly all SAP applications are SOA compliant when they support RFC, because we can easily transform RFC calls into WSDL logic. Many more tools will come with the new ESA design.

The delivery of patterns is currently a problem with nearly all middleware tools, here we are still right at the start. Have a look at Kent Becks/Martin Fowlers book on Enterprise Servcies Patterns for an idea what patterns could look like:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321127420/logosworldcom02.

This was first published in May 2006