Introduction¶
The mobile development kit for SAP Mobile Services is a metadata-based application development platform. This enables developers and technical business users to build cross-platform applications. It allows you to build your application once, in an integrated development environment, and run it natively on mobile devices (Android & iOS).
Use Cases¶
Build Cross-Platform Applications¶
The mobile development kit provides the power and performance of a native app. By generating metadata and JavaScript in the editor, which is translated to native code at runtime, you build your app once, deploy it to SAP Mobile Services, and your end users get a native iOS or Android app on their device.
Deploy Updates Easily¶
You can easily deploy your updated app to your end users with a few clicks, without going through the code-signing process. The mobile development kit client connects to SAP Mobile Services and updates the app content automatically.
Customize and Extend Apps with Reusable Components¶
Reusable components are stand-alone apps that can include pages, actions, rules and global variables. As stand-alone apps, they can be built, tested and updated separately from the main or primary mobile development kit app. This provides you with an easy way to customize, add-on, or extend existing apps without touching the primary app.
Under the Hood¶
Application development is local and web-based, and the mobile development kit framework uses:
- mobile development kit Editor, which is available in Visual Studio Code and in a standard SAP Business Application Studio space,
- SAP Mobile Services, which provides enterprise services such as on-boarding, authentication, offline, and lifecycle management,
- mobile development kit Mobile Client, which is a native application that runs on the device.
- SAP Mobile Services Client (generic client) is available on the app stores. This client is intended for quick testing and proof of concept purposes. For productive usage, we recommend that you create a branded mobile development kit client using either the mobile development kit SDK or SAP Mobile Services Cloud Build service.
Apps are developed visually in the editor and then deployed to SAP Mobile Services and SAP Business Technology Platform.
Tutorials¶
To learn more about the mobile development kit, check out the developer tutorial series below.