Object-Based Navigation (OBN) Between WD Applications

The SAP NetWeaver (NW) Portal and WD for Java are strategic technologies used for user interfaces. Both are part of the SAP NetWeaver technology for the Java platform provided by SAP, and both run on the NW Application Server.

SAP Portal supports a number of functions for integrated WD applications, including object-based navigation (OBN). OBN means that there is object-based interaction between the integrated WD applications, including event handling for portal events, and the navigation between the WD applications within the portal.

For some applications, it is sufficient to be able to navigate to a specific iView or page using the relative or absolute page navigation functions, but sometimes more flexibility is required. For such cases, the object-based navigation method is suitable since it enables the definition of navigation steps at a higher semantic level. Instead of defining a specific URL, you create a so-called operation for a particular business object. The iView or page that is used in order to implement this operation is configured in the portal platform and can be role-specific or user-specific.

Starting from the WD perspective, the integration of object-based navigation is similar to implementing the portal event control. In the case of non-WD applications, the respective iView in JavaScript code that triggers object-based navigation must be created. In the case of WD applications, the WD runtime provides a special WDPortalNavigation service for parameter definition.