Business Object Query Language as Data Access API in ERP Systems

Efficient data manipulation API is a necessary prerequisite in satisfying a number of acute needs of ERP system developers and eventually end-users. The current work defines the efficiency as an ability of accessing and manipulating ERP data at any granularity level, while maintaining integrity of the data. This paper contributes with the concept of query-like service invocation implemented in the form of a business object query language (BOQL). Essentially, BOQL provides on-the-fly orchestration of CRUD-operations of business objects in an ERP system and allows to achieve both the flexibility of SQL and encapsulation of SOA. A special design effort has been dedicated to making BOQL scalable and resistant to changes in data schema of the system. To demonstrate the power of the suggested concept navigation, configuration and composite application development scenarios are presented in the paper. All suggestions have been prototyped with Microsoft .Net