Working with the Development Infrastructure 

The SAP NetWeaver Composition Environment (SAP NetWeaver CE) does not come with an installation of the SAP NetWeaver Development Infrastructure (NWDI), but you can use the functionality of NWDI if you have access to a system with a NWDI that is already installed.

●      Getting Started

With SAP NetWeaver, the NWDI provides an infrastructure for developing based applications on the SAP NetWeaver platform and is responsible for versioning, build and life cycle management of these applications.

The NWDI takes care of all parts of the development process in a project-specific way:

○       Central source file management – in the Design Time Repository (DTR), a file storage in a database with export mechanisms that allows you to synchronize the instances of the DTR in a distributed development.

○       Central build and archive management – in the Component Build Service (CBS), gives developers access to the latest archive versions in a central DB storage and a central build triggered by the developer.

○       Central landscape and transport management – in the Change Management Service (CMS), gives administrators a central service to set up development landscapes for all development tasks and manage all transport processes for these tasks in the same UI.

All the development processes in the NWDI are based on SAP's component model, which enhances the public/private concept of Java by metadata regarding the use of objects without implying any changes to the development objects themselves: a Java interface stays an interface, a public class stays a public class. By clearly defining the visibility of and the dependencies between objects, the component model helps you structure applications into reusable components. Development according to this model is implemented in the Developer Studio.

The applications you develop are split into software components (SCs) (the installation units) and development components (DCs) (which are exactly on the granularity of projects and contain all development objects plus the aforementioned metadata).

In addition, the development is performed in what is called a track. The track abstraction allows you to develop different maintenance contexts for the development of specific releases of your software. The track also takes care of the phases development and consolidation and all transport processes from start to finish when the application is deployed to the productive system or delivered to customers. In this way you have better control over the development versions and the exact source development.

●      Concepts

This section describes the concepts relevant for working with the development infrastructure. It also includes a description of the SAP component model.

●      Tasks

Describes the tasks you can perform over the development infrastructure using the Development Infrastructure perspective.

●      Reference

Contains a description of the command line tool provided with the Developer Studio.

In addition, you will find a tutorial that provides a description of the steps you have to take to work in a team environment, which is required when you share the development on a project.