Mobile Application Studio 
Purpose
This is an object-oriented, visual development tool that is tailored to the architecture of SAP mobile client applications. It allows you to customize mobile client applications, delivered by SAP, according to your specific business requirements, or develop your own applications.
Implementation Considerations
This is available as a component in mySAP Customer Relationship Management. In a three-system landscape that contains development, test and production environments, Mobile Application Studio (MAS) must be installed on all Mobile Development Workstations (MDWs) where application developers customize, test and generate mobile client applications.
The metadata of a mobile client application is delivered as the Mobile Application Repository (MAR). This repository must be installed on the Mobile Repository Server (MRS) for each environment. Application developers working on individual MDWs establish a connection with the MAR from MAS.
Integration
This tool is integrated into Microsoft Visual Studio .NET to:
· Utilize the rich user interface and services of Visual Studio, which is familiar to many Technology Consultants
· Facilitate IntelliSense and Integrated Debugging
· Support multiple languages through .NET
· Utilize standard services like macro recording, personalization and so on
To work with MAS, you must install the components that are indicated in the table below:
Component |
Purpose |
Mobile Application Repository on the Mobile Repository Server |
To store and access metadata of the application |
BDoc Repository in the CRM Server |
To use business documents that exchange business data between the user database and the application |
User Database on the MDW |
To test the application with application data |
Transport Agent on the Mobile Repository Server |
To transport metadata of the application from the development environment to test or production environments |
Mobile Upgrade Console on the MDW |
To transport runtime files of the application to mobile clients |
Features
· Internal Tools and Services - Tools that allow you to:
¡ Visually model development objects related to the user interface, business logic and messages
¡ Manage users of MAS, and naming conventions of objects via namespaces
¡ Manage changes (change isolation) and versions (version history) of development objects
For more information, see Internal Tools and Internal Services.
· Visual Modeling and Generation
MAS provides visual and easy-to-use modeling techniques for creating or modifying the user interface and business logic with minimal changes to the application code. It provides effective generation techniques that ease the effort of generating a customized application. For more information, see Mobile Client Application Customization and Mobile Client Application Generation.
· Change and Version Management
MAS provides security mechanisms that are required in a multi-user development environment. This ensures a consistent MAR and saves development efforts. The “change list” mechanism provides an isolated development view for each application developer. The “versioning” mechanism tracks modifications made to the application by different applications users. The “branching” mechanism ensures that the line of development (modifications made to the application in your environment) is different from what you have received from SAP. For more information, see Mobile Application Repository.
· Industry-specific Customization
MAS allows you to configure the business logic of an application for different industries using “industry templates”. This helps you develop industry-specific applications by reusing the business logic defined for the standard application delivered by SAP. For more information, see Industry Template Explorer.
· Accessibility from other Tools and Applications
You can launch MAS to view the design time window of a specific screen that appears in a mobile client application at runtime. This feature provides a dynamic environment of accessing the development platform while testing the runtime version of the mobile client application.
· Software Logistics Support
MAS maintains a history of changes made to development objects in the form of change lists. The Transport Agent transports these change lists along with related objects to the test or production environment.
MAS generates runtime files to obtain the new version of an application. The Mobile Upgrade Console tool is used to group these files into an upgrade and to send the upgrade to all mobile clients in the field.