SAP TechEd 2011: Wednesday

 

MOB230 – Developing Simple Mobile Applications Using OData
Wednesday 8:00 a.m.
This is an alternative method for developing mobile apps for SAP. The OData method differs from MBO method in that OData requires one less server-side process. The device makes calls directly into the backend system (through an SAP gateway and SUP), bypassing the MBO data modeller. This is a more simple footprint, but you lose the potential benefit of caching all results in the middleware and retrieving only the results you need to display on the device.

CD205 – Technology Preview: ABAP Programming Model Evolution
Wednesday 9:15 a.m.
1. Neat video on the evolution of the ABAP editor.  Looks like they’re pushing the Eclipse tool as the standard SAP development environment.  It provides the latest intelisense for ABAP, but is also a natural editor of other languages used by SAP developer: Javascript, CSS, etc.
2. Improvements to the data modeling concept and type system w.r.t. table relationships.  It sounds like many of these improvements are in preparation for making SAP R/3 available for the SAP HANA system.
3. Enhancement to service consumption and data binding outside of Web Dynpro.  I don’t get this yet – is it for standard ABAP or mobile or what?  It was all theory – no example.
4. Listened to an overview of the Advanced Query Language (AQL) – again in support of SAP HANA.  This is basically a copy of .NET’s LINQ to SQL, only in ABAP.  Looks pretty neat and provides performance improvements in that it only retrieves data requested instead of traversing nested loops to get at related data.

CD260 - SAP NWBC: Enhancing SAP GUI With the Side Panel
Wednesday 10:30 a.m.
NetWeaver Business Client NWBC can be used either as a desktop installation or as NWBC for HTML, access through the browser.  In the 2nd case, no client installation is required.  PFCG is used to configure role-based menus and side panels in NWBC.  Floor Plan Manager (FPM) is used to design simple UIs for transactional data.  Page Builder is used to combine views from disparate, related content into one screen.  This is awesome.  Just listening I can think of many business cases for this: reviewing financial report – show sidebar of specific BW chart; reviewing material – show sidebar of current AMPL; in the enhanced MIGO ‘KEG Material’ tab, move the classification table and AMPL to sidebars to make room if additional fields are requested.  SAP has developed and provided a number of side panel CHIPs out of the box.

MOB265 - OData Mobile App using SUP via SAP NetWeaver Gateway
Wednesday 2:15 p.m.
OData is short for Open Data. It’s a REST-based protocol that is becoming popular because it uses less bandwidth than SOAP.  The SAP NetWeaver Gateway is a piece of software that is installed into SAP NetWeaver and talks OData.  The SUP is an application that provides reverse proxy and user management services for devices and talks to the SAP NetWeaver Gateway.  There are open source alternatives to the SUP.  Entity modeler file (.edmx) was generated using Visual Studio 2010 (coming to Eclipse later).  Great lab.  I learned a lot about the back-end portion of the development.  I skipped the 2nd half (regarding SUP and Eclipse) to check out some other lectures.

MOB105 - Mobilizing SAP Workflow Approvals at HD Supply
Wednesday 4:30 p.m.
HD Supply is a big Blackberry shop.  Explored three potential solutions for mobile delivery of workflow.  Choice: Leapfactor (not Sybase!).  The team utilized SAP Workflow to create a standard SAP approval step to be placed in the SAP Inbox.  Next a task was scheduled to retrieve changes to workflow inbox items and push it to the mobile device.  The development of the mobile application was not discussed in detail.

TEC203 - SAP User Interface Strategy and Roadmap
Wednesday 5:15 p.m.
No strategy.  Just a review of every possible UI option.

BI105 - SAP HANA: How to Set Up a High Value Analytic Scenario
Wednesday 5:45 p.m.
1. SAP HANA comes as a big empty black box.  The first step is to model your data.  You transfer the data to HANA in-memory db.  Develop a Business Object (BOBJ) to query HANA.  Then design a web report to use the BOBJ. 
2. There is something called the HANA Studio used to create the tables in HANA.  You need to create all necessary tables: KNA1, MARA, T001W, etc.  At some point, there will be a way to model your tables from ERP and import them to HANA – it’s not there yet.  Next you need to maintain the source/target system connection.  Today this is NOT simple.  Next you load the data: tables, BW extractors, files, web services. 
3. HANA has three views: attribute view, analytical view, calculation view.  You use these to create measures and dimensions.  HANA is NOT a replacement of SAP BW.  In ~60 days, HANA is a potential database for BW.  Starting to get the idea on this: move all the data as-is to HANA; write a calculation view that performs calculations in memory to transform to the result data; display report.

SAP TechEd 2011: Tuesday

Here’s a short summary of each of the sessions I attended.

SCI266 - X.509 Certificates for SSO
Tuesday 10:00 a.m.
I attended a hands-on lab on the topic of the new X.509 SSO technology from SAP.  Really nice feature.  I’m not a basis guy, but after walking through the entire process myself, it feels pretty easy to configure.  In addition, I think it could help us reduce maintenance cost of our existing SSO solution – especially with respect to web application single sign-on.  I think I heard tell that it is only available for NetWeaver 7.3 (maybe 7.2 also).

MOB110 - Developing Synchronized Mobile Applications
Tuesday 11:30 a.m.
As expected, SAP has had a year to provide more detail documentation and presentations on the subject of mobile development.  It appears that they’ve also provided ways to simply the web development design.  The structure of the Synchronized mobile app is three-tiered.  1. back-end consumable RFC-enabled functions; 2. Sybase Unwired Platform middleware with data model that calls to backend, processes data and stored results server-side; 3. mobile application that calls to SUP and retrieves a subset of the stored results for display on the device.

CD360 – Best Practices for Web Dynpro ABAP
Tuesday 2:15 p.m.
A learning: it doesn’t help trying to guess where people will sit in a hands-on lab in order to manipulate yourself into your own computer.  I almost had it; when the lab started the gal next to me (actually part of group 09) had to practically stretch across me to reach the laptop that was tethered to the desk.  Really nice hands on lab though.  Learned some awesome tips on a new Layout provided called the FormLayout.  Love it.  I really could have used it this last summer with a specific issue I was struggling with.  I also got a better understanding of how to properly use a couple of the layout types I didn’t quite understand.  I learned the golden rule of Web Dynpro: If you want and item to stretch to the size of the window, then all parent containers must have height/width set to 100%.  Next we learned about multi-tab performance and how to use the Web Dynpro performance monitor (Ctrl-Alt-Shft-P).

ALM102 – SAP Netweaver 7.3: How to Get There
Tuesday 4:30 p.m.
Find the master guide.  Download the master guide.  Read the master guide.  Follow the steps in the master guide.

SAP PLM Web UI Discussion
Tuesday ~7:45 p.m.
Caught up with Tom and asked for direction on where to install the components of the PLM Web UI – specifically with respect to customer/supplier access.  As expected, this individuals most familiar with the topic weren’t at SAP TechEd this week.  But Tom was very informative, said that we need to install SAP PLM WUI on the R/3 server (along with the upgrade).  During implementation we will decide what portions of the web PLM solution will be utilized by third party.  We assign a secondary IP address to the server for use by 3rd party and expose the web components required to this secondary IP address in the ICF.  Makes great sense.  Last: there are a few topics that I wasn’t able to make it too.  It would great to have Tom in to show Chris, Chad and I some of the new functionality we’ll get from the upgrade.

Developing Mobile Applications for SAP

I skipped breakfast this morning at SAP TechEd 2010 to get to this hands-on lab (CD162) 40 minutes early. The hope was to get a no-show spot left by one of the approximately 50 registered attendees. One other person still beat me to the door. Right now, I'm second on the waiting list.

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I made it!  Good lab too; it was worth the wait.  The important take-aways of this course were (1) learning how to use a set of SDOE_* transactions that are used to design the data structures and rules that are exported and consumed by the mobile application development environment; and (2) understanding how to consume the the published XML data structures in an application developed in Visual Studio C#.


Creating Distribution Rules
Transaction SDOE_WB is available in SAP Netweaver Mobile 7.1.  It is the Workbench used to create your distribution rules for mobile devices.  Here you indicate the data structures and configure rules used to determine what instances of those data structures are passed on to the mobile devices.


Developing on the SAP/Sybase Co-Innovation Stack 
After designing the data model to be consumed by the mobile application, you will need to export the model as an ESDMA bundle.  This is used by the Sybase Unwired Platform (SUP) to generate code in C# or Java (possibly others).  The generated code handles passing data and messages between the mobile device local database and the SAP backend database.  This allows you, the developer, to focus on the mobile application's business logic and design.

Looking forward to my first project.

UPDATE: I've since learned that there is many different ways (released and unreleased) to do mobile development.  Most of which are complicated at best.  The post above is just one small piece of one way to get a mobile application up and running.

SAP TechEd 2010 Keynote

Vishal Sikka presented the keynote session at SAP TechEd 2010 in Las Vegas. The important take-aways for me were:

SAP Netweaver 7.3 Release
Information about the upcoming release of SAP Netweaver 7.3.

Coalescing mobile application strategy
A presentation was given on a 2-minute development project published to an iPad using the Gateway Consumption Toolset.  Looking forward to attending additional sessions this week regarding mobile development.

SAP In-Memory applications with HANA

I had a conversation with an SAP Labs technician to learn more about this.  This is a device (think Google Search Appliance) that contains the hardware and software in one appliance.  It integrates well into existing system landscapes in that it can sit next to an SAP R/3 and/or SAP BW system and replicate a predefined set of data from either or both systems to be presented to end users in an in-memory, high-performance method.