Creating and Editing a Web Interface 

Use

You create Web interfaces and edit them in order to generate a BSP application on the basis of the Web interface. The BSP application accesses the planning objects using a Web browser.

Prerequisites

To create a functional BSP application, planning objects must already be created in the planning environment. You can also create Web interfaces as prototypes in which the access to planning objects is not yet realized. As a result you have the option of dealing with necessary preparations before the final structure of the planning objects has been fixed.

SAP delivers planning applications based on Web interfaces that have been created with the Web Interface Builder.  To avoid conflicts with the delivered Web interfaces, create your Web interfaces in the namespace that is reserved for customers.  This begins with Y or Z.

Note that the Web interface development objects delivered by SAP are part of the packages delivered. SAP recommends that you do not make any changes to these objects as this represents a modification and has organizational and technical consequences.  However, if you do want to make changes, copy the delivered objects and then change the copies.

Procedure

Creating a Web interface with the wizard

The Web Interface Builder contains a wizard that supports you when creating a new Web interface:

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       1.      Choose Business Planning and Simulation ® Web Interface Builder ® Customizing from the SAP Easy Access Menu screen. You get to the initial screen of the Web Interface Builder.

       2.      Choose  Web Interface ® Create with Wizard. You get to the first page of the wizard.

       3.      In the following steps of the wizard put together the elements that you require.

                            a.      Start

                            b.      Specify Name for Web Interface

                            c.      Select Planning Areas

                            d.      Select Planning Levels

                            e.      Create Individual BSP Pages

                              f.      Complete

The wizard offers explanations of the possible settings for every step. First you can only switch to the next step. However, as soon as you have carried out some steps, you can switch between the steps that you have already carried out in any order. In this way, you can change settings from an earlier step later.

       4.      When you have made all the settings and have arrived at the last step, choose Complete. The system creates a new Web interface according to your settings.

       5.      To save the Web interface, choose  (Web Interface ® Save).

A Web interface that you have created with the wizard is no different to a manually created Web interface. Therefore, you can subsequently process a Web interface created with a wizard like a manually created one.

Creating a Web interface manually

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       1.      Choose Business Planning and Simulation ® Web Interface Builder ® Customizing from the SAP Easy Access Menu screen. You get to the initial screen of the Web Interface Builder.

       2.      Choose  (Web Interface ® Create).

The system displays a dialog box in which you can determine some basic properties of the Web interface. Depending on what you enter here, the system automatically creates certain elements for you for the new Web interface.

       3.      In the Number of Pages field, enter whether the generated application should consist of one or several HTML pages.

       4.      Select which available Standard Elements the system should create on every page of the application.

You can manually correct the selection which you make in both of the last steps when creating a Web interface by adding further elements or removing elements that are not required.

       5.      Edit the new Web interface as described in the following section Editing a Web Interface.

Editing a Web interface

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       1.      Choose Business Planning and Simulation ® Web Interface Builder ® Customizing from the SAP Easy Access Menu screen. You get to the initial screen of the Web Interface Builder.

       2.      Choose  (Web Interface ® Open).

       3.      From the list of available Web interfaces, select the desired one. The system displays the hierarchical element structure of the Web interface.

       4.      Edit the Web interface components (see Components for Web Interfaces):

·         To insert a new component to the Web interface, choose:

¡        Create Page in the context menu of an element of type “application”. A dialog box appears where you can enter the name of the page.

¡        Create Subcomponents in the context menu of an element of type “page” or “container”. A dialog box appears with an overview of the subcomponents available in the system. Select the desired element type.

·         To edit the attributes of an existing component, double-click on its name in the element structure or choose Change Attributes in the context menu of the component.

The system displays the attributes of the component in the attribute editor.

The different attributes of the components are documented in the system. To get more detailed information on a specific attribute, choose the desired attribute in the attribute editor and then use F1.

       5.      When you have created all required elements and have set their attributes, save the Web interface.

       6.      Choose  (Edit ® Check Consistency). If necessary, the system points out problems such as, for example, incorrect references between elements of the Web interface.

       7.      Choose  (Edit ® Generate). The system generates the objects specified in the Result section below.

       8.      Choose Edit ®Display Preview or Display in External Browser to test the application.

If you are in the test phase when creating or changing a Web interface and want to check your results as quickly as possible, you can use the quick preview in the Web interface instead of both of the steps last mentioned. To do this, choose Goto ® Settings. Under Preview in the Settings dialog box choose the Quick Preview w/o Generating option.  This means that you can display the Web interface in the preview window without having to generate the BSP application first (which can be time-consuming).

Result

As a result of the concluding generation in the Web Interface Builder, the system has generated the following objects:

·        For every element of the type “page” that you have created in the Web interface, the system generates a BSP page which contains the elements intended in the Web interface. This page is stored in the system. At the runtime of the application, the SAP Web Application Server generates a page in HTML format, which is displayed in the browser, from every requested BSP page.

·        In addition to that, additional pages are generated for special purposes (for example, a page which is displayed when exiting the Web application). 

·        If in the attributes of the Web interface you have entered the usage of your own class, the system generates this class. The generated BSP pages then use the processing logic implemented in this class (and not the standard class of the Web Interface Builder).

 

See also:

Architecture of the SAP Web AS

Creating Web Applications and Business Server Pages