SAP Web Development Options

Which development platform should you use to develop new SAP web-based applications?

This is a question that really doesn’t have a clear cut answer. There are many pros and cons for both technologies and SAP really has not produced a clear direction statement as to which direction they will be going with their new products.

Java Overview

The Java program language and environment was designed to solve a number of problems in modern programming practice.  The language takes advantage of modern development strategies including:

  • Object Oriented
  • Security Driven
  • Architectural / Platform Neutral
  • Interpreted
  • Multi-Threaded

The Java development community began based around ideals of open-standards and community based developments. Overtime companies have taken advantage of the openness and acceptance of the architecture and developed products and development platforms around the Java architecture

Notable Considerations

The following points could be used to make a decision to standardize on the Java development framework

  • With the release of the WebDynPro for Java and the JEE 5.0 Web Application Server, SAP has shown clear commitment to the Java platform
  • SAP-specific skills are secondary and there is a considerable amount of Java skilled resources in the market place.
  • Java is inherently architecture and platform neutral. In most cases, code written in Java will run on different platforms with no requirements for portability.
  • Java has become a mature web-development tool. Frameworks ( Struts ect ) have been developed to enhance and speed up development of large scale web applications. SAP’s adherence to the Java standard allow for these re-usable frameworks to be integrated into the portal application

Employee Self-Service Application (Java)

Employee Self Service - Java Development

Employee Self Service - Java Development


ABAP (Web Development)  Overview

ABAP originated from an assembler macro language for reporting purposes in the seventies. It evolved to an interpreted language for reporting and dialog programming in the mid-eighties, with compiler and VM implemented in mainframe assembler as part of the SAP R/2 system.

ABAP supports a hybrid programming model. You can use an pseudo object-oriented “OO” programming model based on classes and interfaces, and you can use the more classic procedural and event-driven programming model based on function modules, subroutines, dialog modules, and event blocks.

Historically ABAP is the core development platform for SAP’s client-server based applications and has adopted a web development framework for development of web applications

Notable Considerations

The following points could be used to make a decision to standardize on the ABAP web development framework

  • SAP has re-iterated its support of ABAP as a web-development platform with the release of the WebDynPro-ABAP.
  • There are multiple methodologies for developing ABAP-based web applications, including
    • Mini-Apps
    • Business Server Pagses (BSP)
    • ITS Powered WebGUI

ITS interpreted R3 Screen

ITS Screen - ABAP WebGUI

ITS Screen - ABAP WebGUI

Business Server Pages ( BSP )

CRM People Centric UI - ABAP

CRM People Centric UI - ABAP

Scaling of ABAP-based web applications are done in the same fashion as scaling a non-web R3 based application.

Typically the web components of mySAP Applications ( i.e. CRM ) are hosted on the same servers as the historical client-server instances.

For example, the People-Centric UI included in  CRM runs on the same servers are the CRM application. Therefore, web components are  not abstracted from the CRM application

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3 Responses to “SAP Web Development Options”

  1. Oliver Says:
    January 5th, 2010 at 5:02 am

    On my point of view, additionnal notables considerations are :
    - Java apps with SAP needs middlewares to “translate” requests from Java to ABAP and inversely. Performance may be affected.
    - Java apps run on a different platform than ABAP apps (not the same WAS). ABAP-based apps use a WAS integrated in the backend.

    Right?

    Regards,
    Oliver

  2. cgutjahr Says:
    January 5th, 2010 at 8:17 pm

    Hi Oliver,

    You are basically correct. Couple of points..

    - SAP includes several ‘translators’ which allow access to ABAP-based APIs. These include XML-based, JCA-based, .NET connectors and one of their own called the JCO connector.

    - Actually SAP has their own JAVA Application Server. So they have applications that run on either Java or ABAP.

    Hope that helps.

  3. Jessica Says:
    January 17th, 2010 at 2:32 pm

    Nice post mate

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