Development Configurations  

The development configuration determines the viewpoint of a developer on the development infrastructure. The configuration determines the software components to be developed and controls access to objects in the SAP NetWeaver Development Infrastructure (NWDI). All developers who share the same configuration work with the same consistent objects. The NWDI uses configurations to offer the same consistent development environment to all participating developers.

●      The configuration selects those states and versions of components from the overall number that can be used together.

●      The dependencies between software components (SCs) are specified and controlled.

●      All central services required for the development are referenced.

Purpose of Development Configurations

There is a large number of SCs. Every one of these SCs exists in different states. For the different SCs, there are DTR workspaces containing the source files of these SCs in the correct version. An SC currently under development is not allowed to use all other SCs. For this reason, the person responsible for the development configuration provides all developers working on this SC with a configuration that points to a workspace containing exactly the SC to be developed and the SCs to be used.

A configuration determines that a software component ABC, which is being developed in this configuration, is allowed to access software components XYZ and RST.

Advantages of Using Development Configurations

In a development landscape without configurations, you as a developer have to find out for yourself which combinations of used components are possible or allowed. The NWDI facilitates this task considerably, because an appropriate configuration has to be created only once, to be then used by all participating developers. The configuration contains the information which components of which state can be used together.

As far as the developer is concerned, a configuration defines a kind of logical development system: it combines a number of components in certain well-defined states, whose source code may well be distributed to different repositories. Every repository contains other states of these components as well, and possibly a large number of other components that are not visible in this particular configuration. From the viewpoint of the developer, a configuration filters the information and the tools relevant for his or her work out of a possible large development landscape.