¶ Working with Kyma's Built-in Services: Connectivity and Events
SAP Kyma is a cloud-native platform designed to extend and integrate applications through microservices, serverless functions, and event-driven architecture. Two core built-in services that make Kyma powerful and flexible are Connectivity and Events. These services simplify the way applications communicate, react, and integrate with SAP and third-party systems.
This article explores how Kyma’s Connectivity and Eventing services work, their use cases, and how to leverage them effectively for building enterprise-grade cloud-native applications.
The Connectivity service in Kyma enables secure and reliable integration between Kyma applications running in the Kubernetes cluster and external systems — especially SAP business systems such as SAP S/4HANA, SAP SuccessFactors, or SAP Cloud Platform services.
- Secure Communication: Provides encrypted tunnels using SAP Cloud Connector, ensuring secure access to on-premise or cloud systems.
- API Management: Simplifies API exposure and consumption with authentication, authorization, and traffic control.
- Service Catalog Integration: Allows Kyma services to discover and bind external APIs seamlessly.
- Establishing Connection: The SAP Cloud Connector creates a secure tunnel between the Kyma runtime and the target SAP system.
- Service Binding: Developers bind external APIs to Kyma services via Service Catalog entries.
- Access and Use APIs: Kyma workloads can then consume these APIs securely and efficiently as if they were native services.
- Accessing SAP backend data for custom microservices.
- Integrating third-party APIs into SAP-centric workflows.
- Exposing Kyma services to external clients via managed APIs.
Kyma’s Eventing service implements an event-driven architecture by allowing decoupled components to communicate asynchronously through events. This promotes loose coupling, scalability, and real-time responsiveness.
- CloudEvents Compliance: Uses the CloudEvents standard for event format ensuring interoperability.
- Event Brokers and Subscribers: Supports event brokers that manage event routing and delivery to subscribers.
- Event Sources: Connects to various event sources, including SAP systems, cloud services, and custom applications.
- Filtering and Transformation: Events can be filtered or transformed before delivery.
- Event Publishing: Event sources (e.g., SAP systems or custom microservices) publish events to the Kyma event bus.
- Event Routing: The event broker routes events to appropriate subscribers based on filters.
- Event Consumption: Subscribers (such as serverless functions or microservices) receive and process events asynchronously.
- Triggering workflows based on business events like order creation or payment confirmation.
- Synchronizing data between SAP and non-SAP systems in near real-time.
- Building reactive microservices that respond to system changes dynamically.
¶ Leveraging Connectivity and Eventing Together
Together, Connectivity and Eventing enable Kyma users to build sophisticated, integrated, and reactive applications:
- Use Connectivity to securely access SAP systems.
- Use Eventing to listen to events generated by these systems and trigger automated responses.
- Combine APIs and events to orchestrate complex business processes spanning multiple systems.
- Secure API Usage: Always configure secure authentication methods and manage credentials carefully when using Connectivity.
- Design for Asynchronous Processing: Favor event-driven patterns to improve scalability and decoupling.
- Monitor Event Flows: Use Kyma’s observability tools to monitor event delivery and troubleshoot issues.
- Use CloudEvents: Adhere to standards for interoperability and future-proofing your architecture.
Kyma’s built-in Connectivity and Eventing services are fundamental enablers for building scalable, secure, and integrated cloud-native applications in the SAP ecosystem. By leveraging these services, developers can seamlessly connect SAP systems with custom extensions and respond to business events in real time — driving innovation and agility.