Playing with ESR and XI

After struggling with SAP systems from outside for around 3 years now i decided to go and do something inside it. I say struggling from outside since all i did with SAP systems till now was to look at the interfaces and consume the interfaces to make something in .NET world or to look at the Netweaver screens with horror, look at the ABAP developers in awe as to how they work on such complex looking UI and look at the ABAP technology stack as a neutral observer and sometimes criticising it.
This time i decided to go in and develop at least something in the Netweaver ABAP stack myself and get rid of this fear, awe and helplessness when some discussion happens around ABAP stack.

So here's the POC which i decided to do around a week back
1) Define a simple service interface in ESR
2) Provide an implementation in ABAP stack
3) Consume the service from .NET and prove that service works

Over the period of last week it gor refined to
1) The service should have 2 methods GetEmployeeIds and GetEmployeeById
2) Use ESR, XI Integration builder and implement the service in ABAP

I'll be posting my struggles in a series of blogs and will tag this series with ESR/XI/PI

~Abhishek