Skip to content

Introduction

The Mobile Back-End Tools offer tools that let developers model OData services and generate Java EE or Spring Boot web applications to implement these services. They also automatically create any necessary database tables, triggers, and views.

License

You may use the software solely for the purpose of developing applications for use with 'SAP Mobile Services'; provided that for those SDK components that can be used in connection with or deployed on platforms other than SAP Mobile Services, you may use those components other than with SAP Mobile Services if you have obtained a production license to SAP Mobile Services.

Usage Scenarios

The Mobile Back-End Tools are suitable for the following usage scenarios:

  1. Adding OData change tracking (delta link) capabilities to existing OData services or non-OData back-end systems (such as REST, RFC, or SQL). You can achieve this by placing a delta-enabled cache or proxy layer in front of the existing systems.

    Note

    OData change tracking enables efficient data synchronization, optimizing delta downloads for applications on occasionally-connected client devices. This feature is crucial for maintaining an acceptable user experience in these applications.

    See: Caching Data in the Cloud, Change Tracking for CAP Services, Working with Existing Database Tables.

  2. Building an OData service that directly supports OData change tracking, without an existing back-end system.

    See: Change Tracking.

  3. Building a caching layer in front of one or more OData or non-OData back-end systems. This is usually done for performance reasons, but it doesn't necessarily require occasionally-connected clients.

  4. Building an OData service that has no OData change tracking support. The -nodb option permits a scenario without any database for storage.

    Note

    SAP Cloud Application Programming Model is recommended when building OData services for non-change-tracking scenarios.

  5. Temporarily emulating OData back-end systems with predetermined metadata to enable client development while the OData back-end systems are still under implementation. This approach includes support for metadata that might be incompatible with CAP services.

    See: Generating a Development Backend Server.

Basic Requirements

A developer defines the data model by providing an OData CSDL (Common Schema Definition Language) XML file for version 2.0 or 4.0 of the OData specification.

The SAP Mobile Services OData CSDL modeler Visual Studio Code extension is available for visualization of CSDL XML files (preferably with file extension .csdl.xml).

To store OData entity sets, the generated OData service uses an in-memory database or SQL database. Use an in-memory database or H2 SQL database (for testing only) or use a production-ready SQL database that's available in SAP Business Technology Platform (e.g. SAP HANA) or from a hyperscaler (e.g. Azure SQL, PostgreSQL).

A number of other database products are supported as back-end systems, when delta-enabling (by caching) existing on-premise SQL database back-ends to enable offline consumption. See Cache Databases for more details.

Except for the in-memory database and H2 database, installing, creating, and configuring SQL databases and schemas are outside the scope of these instructions. See the SAP Business Technology Platform Cockpit documentation set for additional information.

The generated OData service, when first started, automatically generates the tables and other required SQL artifacts within your selected target database or schema. The configured database credentials must therefore be for a database user with suitable permissions for table/index creation. HANA HDI containers do not have suitable default permissions for dynamic table/index creation. Therefore HANA databases must always be bound with schema access.

Development Tools

The Mobile Back-End Tools integrate with the tasks.json mechanism, and are supported with:

Last update: May 19, 2025