Composite Applications 

One motivation to use existing business logic is to leverage existing applications and to reduce the development time. Up to now, new applications were mainly developed in form of backend integration using the already implemented data storage and making changes to the application itself. This leads to improperly decoupled business logic with a proprietary, inflexible interface that can influence applications presently used.

Composite applications overcome these problems by breaking down applications into components and thereby separating the business logic. These components are than used by new applications. New emerging standards and Web services make it even easier to create new composite applications.

Composite applications make use of model-driven architecture (MDA) and can use Web services standards as well as provide Web services.

The new applications are loosely coupled to the backend systems and are easier to customize, leading to a new logical application tier that can be deployed and upgraded independently of the platform infrastructure.

The technologies, including Java and Web service based standards, used in the different layers of a composite application are the major difference to the traditional business applications previously described.

The dotted area contains the layers where the industry standards are used. Layers cut by the dotted area can also use SAP technology, for example, to connect to SAP backend systems or to modify the user interface.

SAP NetWeaver supports the following technologies:

●      User interaction

JSP, Web Dynpro for Java, SAP NetWeaver EP and Adobe Forms for user interfaces and Guided Procedures (GP) to implement the process/workflow.

●      Business logic

EJB

●      State management

EJB, JDO, JDBC

●      Services

Web services

●      Connectivity

JCA, JMS, Web Services, RFC and JCo