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Visual Composer is a Web-based visual modeling development environment that enables business process experts and developers to quickly create and adapt model-based transactional and analytical applications, without coding. Visual Composer minimizes the effort and time required to create an application, resulting in faster go-live decision making.

This version of Visual Composer introduces the concept of reusable components for modeling. Visual Composer enables the modeler to create components that can be reused within different models. For example, a component displaying sales information for the top five North American customers can be used within multiple models for various analytics dashboards.

Visual Composer enables business process experts to create enterprise applications using standardized components that meet SAP standards and quality criteria. Applying their understanding of the business requirements and knowledge of their organization's software to accomplish the various business processes, business process experts can use Visual Composer to map out the logical flow of the required applications.

Visual Composer features a visual user interface that streamlines application development, enabling users to model applications by dragging and dropping elements onto a Design board, rather than manually writing code. This modeling tool provides sophisticated, yet simple-to-use, tools for creating applications that process data from back-end systems (SAP systems, Web services, and others). Visual Composer utilizes the SAP connector-framework interfaces to enable modelers to access a range of systems, including SAP and third-party enterprise systems.

The tools provided by Visual Composer are powerful and intuitive, with a user interface that is user-centric and highly efficient. The Layout board enables the modeler to determine the visual layout of the application, and the Design board enables the modeler to determine data structure, data flow, and event flow in the application. The model elements and controls are industry-standard, both in graphical look-and-feel and in their behavior. For example, an input form is displayed and manipulated as an identifiable and familiar view, with all the controls displayed and configured in a standard and straightforward manner.

Visual Composer compiles the models and deploys them to different UI technologies, such as Web Dynpro. Business process experts can interact with application developers and content experts to build or customize applications as needed, accessing the Visual Composer application via a Web browser on any computer.

Features

Visual Composer is designed according to the following prime considerations:

·        Simplicity

¡        Visual Composer enables fast development of model-based business components for business applications, without requiring manual coding skills.

¡        The Visual Composer graphical interface is user-friendly: it implements drag and drop capabilities, direct layout visualization, and a range of other tools for facilitating model building and adaptation.

¡        Visual Composer is browser-based, eliminating the need for client-side installation and maintenance.

      Reusability

¡        Using reusable components as building blocks when modeling an application markedly reduces model maintenance and improves the efficiency of the modeling process. Through the use of reusable components, modelers can leverage these same reusable assets in the design of other models with little or no modification necessary.

      Connectivity to SAP and third-party systems

¡        Visual Composer utilizes the SAP connector-framework interfaces to enable access to a range of data services, including SAP and third-party enterprise systems.

      Support for different runtime environments

¡        Visual Composer is a robust tool in which models can be created once, and then deployed to multiple runtime environments as required.

      Test-and-Redo

¡        Visual Composer is ideal for trying out a model, quickly deploying it – and then going back to the “drawing board” for correction and tweaking. You can also use Visual Composer to define application requirements by creating a model as a prototype, and then transferring the model to a developer to implement the more complex aspects.

 

In summary, Visual Composer enables business process experts to apply their inherent understanding of their organizations’ requirements to create and adapt applications to their specific business needs. With their knowledge of their organization’s business processes, business process experts can create applications without programming knowledge, thereby acting as application developers. These applications can then be subsequently customized and continuously modified in Visual Composer as the organization’s business objectives evolve.

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