Creating First-Class User
Interfaces
SAP's UI Strategy
These days a powerful, highly-interactive, but also usable and accessible user interface (UI) is more important than ever before. Thanks to the World Wide Web, people are getting more and more used to easy Web designs and expect such designs not only when browsing the WWW, but also when working with powerful business applications.
Within SAP NetWeaver™ 7.0, SAP addresses this requirement as follows:
1. SAP NetWeaver Portal provides an intuitive, personalizable frontend to access any types of applications, information, and services through a Web browser.
2. Web Dynpro provides a powerful programming model for developing professional Web UIs for business applications running in the portal.
Of course, other UI technologies, such as BSP and SAP GUI, are still supported and also described in this section. However, it is highly recommended to use Web Dynpro for new applications to benefit from new technical paradigms in UI development and future development improvements.
Model-Based User-Interface Development Using Web Dynpro
Web Dynpro is the strategic approach of SAP to building professional Web UIs for business applications running in SAP Enterprise Portal. It combines the strengths of the GUI/Dynpro approach offered in Application Server ABAP, which includes dictionary-based field validation and error handling, and seamless integration in a software lifecycle and distribution infrastructure. It handles all installation, upgrade, administration, and monitoring tasks with Internet innovations such as zero installation, worldwide access, and integration of arbitrary content with hyperlinks. Web Dynpro comes in two flavors:
Web Dynpro
Java and
Web Dynpro provides declarative, code-free design of sets and sequences of screens, interactions, data bindings, and more. This greatly expands the scope of UI programming beyond control libraries such as HTMLB, basic Server Page technologies such as ABAP Business Server Pages or Java Server Pages (including tag library approaches), and pure gateway approaches such as SAP GUI for HTML.
Advantages for the application developer:
● Higher productivity through declarative approaches to modeling instead of programming, layout, screen usage, navigation, and data binding.
● Data dictionary integration for UI services (for example, automatic value help, type support, reuse of central, localization-dependent texts, text strings, table headings, and so on).
● Automatic error handling, extending the error handling in classic Dynpros.
● Cutting-edge efficiency for Java development through full integration in the Java Development Infrastructure (JDI) avoiding error-prone tasks such as building, distributing, and installing components.
Client
independency for wireless browsers on mobile devices
● Libraries
● Modification-free end-user personalization
● Interoperability between Web Dynpro applications and application based on different Web frameworks, such as JSF. Struts is featured by new APIs calling Suspend and Resume.
● Web Dynpro Client for Windows and Java for a non-browser-based look and feel.
Other Supported UI Technologies: ITS, BSP, and HTML for Business
HTML Business for
Java (
HTMLb) and
Business Server Pages (
BSPs) are
fully supported in the future and are tightly integrated in SAP NetWeaver
Portal.
To guarantee a seamless user experience, all SAP UI technologies follow the unified rendering approach to guarantee a consistent look and feel; portal services such as client-side eventing and WorkProtect mode can be used to interact between Web Dynpro applications and non-Web Dynpro applications.
With SAP NetWeaver,
the
SAP GUI
for HTML of the ITS and the Internet Application Component (IAC)
runtime is integrated in the NetWeaver Application Server.
SAP NetWeaver Portal Integration
SAP NetWeaver Portal is SAP's strategic approach to access any kind of application, information, and service using a Web browser.
It provides a single point of access to the complete range of enterprise information sources and applications. It allows users to search internal and external sources for targeted information, personalize portal content to suit their working style, and access both structured and unstructured information across the organization.
The smallest
visible unit in the portal is an iView (portlet), the basic element of a
portal page. It is a mini application that retrieves information, processes
it, and displays it in your portal. For more information about creating
iViews, see the
Running an Enterprise
Portal scenario in this guide.