SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer: User Guide 

Purpose

SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer is a powerful design tool that facilitates the creation of portal content for SAP Enterprise Portal 6.0 and NetWeaver ’04, using a visual user interface rather than manually writing code. It provides sophisticated, yet simple-to-use tools for creating portal iViews that process data from back-end systems. Visual Composer operates on top of the portal, utilizing the portal’s connector-framework interfaces to allow users to access a range of data sources, including SAP and third-party enterprise systems. Special connectors are also supported, such as that used for accessing data services from Siebel systems. Because Visual Composer is a fully Web-based application, business consultants can interact with business users (content experts) to build or customize pages and iViews as needed, accessing the software from any machine.

SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer can produce iViews that run on both SAP Enterprise Portal 6.0 SP2 (Patch 4 and above) as well as SAP NetWeaver ’04 SP Stack 05 and above.

Siebel connectivity (through iWay connectors) is available only with SAP Enterprise Portal 6.0 SP2, while SAP BI connectivity is available only with SAP NetWeaver ’04.

 

Features

From the Visual Composer client – the Storyboard – you can design models that include your hierarchy of pages and their required iViews. All aspects of the iViews can be constructed, including:

·        The Data Service Layer

Visual Composer provides tools that let you connect via the portal to back-end applications defined in the portal system landscape. This connection enables you to import into your Visual Composer model the relevant Remote Function Calls (RFCs), Business APIs (BAPIs) and other data sources on which you want to base your iViews.

·        The User Interface (UI) Logic

The UI logic defines which UI components are presented to the user at runtime, how the user may interact with the components, and what the underlying data queries are. You construct the UI logic by dragging and dropping icons that represent the elements of your iView, such as the forms it displays at runtime. As you construct the UI logic, Visual Composer writes the underlying code.

·        The UI Layout

The layout defines all the visual aspects of the iView. The Storyboard provides wysiwyg tools for customizing the iView layout.

The model you build with Visual Composer is automatically coded in the proprietary Generic Modeling Language (GML). When your Visual Composer model is complete, you use the Visual Composer compiler to convert the GML code into a format supported by the portal. You can also export your model to another Visual Composer, and import other models as well.

The following figure depicts the general architecture of the Visual Composer system.

SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer Architecture

The Visual Composer compiler lets you generate business packages that can be deployed to any portal using the standard deploy procedure. Once deployed, the pages and iViews created by Visual Composer can retrieve data from the SAP Enterprise Portal runtime connectivity framework and display this information just like any other hand-coded portal pages and iViews.

Before You Begin:

You are advised to prepare for portal connectivity by ensuring that:

You have the appropriate user permissions to access the portal.

You are mapped in the portal as a user to the back-end system from which you intend to import data services.

Your portal is properly connected to the required back-end system(s) and you know what the system alias is for each system.

For more information, see the following sections in the portal Administration Guide, accessed from SAP Help Portal at help.sap.com/nw04 ® SAP Library ® SAP NetWeaver ® People Integration ® Portal ® Administration Guide ® System Administration.

User permissions: Permissions, Role/User Distribution and Object Locking ® Portal Permissions

User mapping: User Management Configuration

Defining systems and assigning system aliases: System Configuration ® System Landscape ® Creating Systems

 

Be sure to read SAP Note 716752 for the latest information about limitations, known issues, and workarounds for SAPNetWeaver Visual Composer.

You can find the SAP Note at SAP Service Marketplace at  service.sap.com/notes.