I am back home from Boston this week after my first Red Hat Summit. What a tremendous conference this was... very well run and attended. I am really proud to be counted as a Red Hat employee.

The purpose of my attendence was to co-present with Mustafa Saglam from SAP to talk about our co-ordinated efforts over the last 18+ months. The presentation was called Interoperability Results from SAP & Red Hat Collaboration and featured an overview of SAP NetWeaver Gateway as well as demos of integration with JBoss Middleware, specifically with JBDS and Red Hat JBoss Data Services. Getting a chance to show customers and potential customers how to consume SAP data in JBoss using an OData, REST-based, open standards interface exposed by SAP NetWeaver Gateway was an exciting opportunity for us and was well-received by the audience. Many companies have struggled to find ways to consume or integrate their SAP siloed data and the collaboration between Red Hat and SAP has removed that barrier. The demos walked people through how to take an SAP NetWeaver Gateway OData service and import as a data source in JBDS/EDS. I also showed off our new OData Translator that maps OData services to relational entities and generates queryable tables in Teiid Designer. These tables can then be deployed in a virtual database (VDB) and accessed as a JDBC or REST source. Finally, I showed how any deployed VDB can be accessed as an OData service using the OData provider capablities of Red Hat JBoss Data Services.

While I was there, I also worked the Data Services demo pod. This gave me a chance to share the power of data virtualization with attendees. Many had never heard of our data services product or even knew such a technology existed. I had many tell me their data integration issues and it was so rewarding to see the light go on in their head when they realized that we could not only solve their dilema, but we could do so at a fraction of the cost and time that it would take to build a custom solution. The SAP booth was right next to the data services pod, so the close proximity allowed us easily share our stories with attendees. We both walked interested parties back and forth to share the exciting and complimentary technologies both SAP and Red Hat have developed.

The conference also gave us an opportunity to announce a new Fedora 18 virtual image that is pre-configured to allow for the installation of the SAP NetWeaver Gateway Trial Bundle. The bundle allows you to take Gateway for a spin and even comes with a ready-to-go OData service that contains flight information. You can use this Gateway instance to try out the JBoss integration or just get familiar with OData.

I am excited to continue working with Mustafa and SAP on developing more integration with JBoss middleware. Stay tuned for more technical advances between us to make your SAP and Red Hat integration projects a snap!