SapInsideTrackBonn Sap&Adobe

#SapInsideTrackBonn 2010

SAP & Adobe

Sergio Ferrari (www.techedge.it)

Renald Wittwer (www.in-con.de)

some SAP & Adobe combined products

are now mature

after sharing real-life experiences

let’s try

to forecast market demands

and to identify best scenarios

Agenda

Combined and competitive products

Adobe Forms

IFbA - Adobe Interactive Forms

Rich Enterprise Applications (REAs) with Adobe Flex

Flash Platform

Adobe in the Enterprise

…Adobe is the creator of PDF

Rich Internet Applications (RIA) backend engine

The Composite Application builder

The Business Process Management

Combined Competitive

Adobe in SAP Adobe Forms

Adobe Interactive Forms

Adobe Flash Island for Web Dynpro

Adobe InDesign for SAP MDM print publishing

Visual Composer runtime option (Flex SDK)

Visual Composer drawing boar (from Adobe SVG pluginto Silverlight)

Xcelsius runtime (Flex SDK)

ActionScript Proxy Generator for Adobe FlexBuilder (unofficial tool)

SAP Adobe Interactive Forms vs. Adobe LiveCycle Forms

SAP CE vs. Flash Builder + Adobe LiveCycle Data Services

SAP BPM vs. Adobe LiveCycle Process Management

SAP BAM vs. LiveCycle Business Activity Monitoring

SAP Portal vs. Adobe LiveCycle Mosaic (no KM)

ActionScript Proxy Generator vs. Adobe Flash Builder 4.0 Web Service wizard

Agenda

Combined and competitive products

Adobe Forms

IFbA - Adobe Interactive Forms

Rich Enterprise Applications (REAs) with Adobe Flex

SAP Forms timelineSAPScript Adobe Forms (Web AS 7.0)SMARTForms (=>4.6)

SAP Forms strategy

From SDN:

The SAP forms strategy is based on SAP Interactive Forms by Adobe (IFbA).

This applies to both print and interactive forms.

In this context, most Business Suite solutions have already been converted to the

IFbA technology (more than 2300 forms), and new standard SAP forms will be

created using IFbA instead of Smart Forms or SAPscript.

SAPscript and Smart Forms shall continue to be supported inline with SAP's

maintenance strategy, thereby ensuring the ability to protect existing customer

investment."

Adobe Forms SMARTForms SAPScript

The StrategyAllowed exception in case of

Adobe Forms limitations(e.g. Single job larger than 500 pages)

re-use of old staff only

Note 894389 - Rel. Restr.: SAP NW 2004s - Adobe Document Services

Note 1009567 - Functional differences SAP Interactive Forms/Smart Forms

Adobe Forms in SAP ECC 6.0 (/nSFW5)

SAP ECC 6.0 EhP4

Business Function Set

ERP_ALL_PDF_FORMS

Report

RERP_EHP_SHOW_FO

RM_LIST is a menu to

activate 400+ Forms

(customizing)

Adobe Forms – tipsAs from SDN blog: SAP Interactive Forms by Adobe - Job Profiles SAP (NetWeaver 7.1 EhP1)

As from help.sap.com:

Bundling Forms when Creating PDFs

Forms are sent to Adobe Document Services (ADS) for processing. You can optimize communication with ADS by bundling forms in a single call

Adobe Forms – best practices

As from SDN blog: ADS Hub - Central Installation of Adobe Document Services

ADS Service Hub

XIBI

ERP

Europe

Latin AmericaSRM

XIBI

ERP

ADS Service Hub

The use of Transactional RFC (tRFC) can be very useful in case of

asynchronous scenarios like printing in Update Task or eMail after the

end of a transaction (COMMIT AND WAIT)

Adobe Forms – best practices

ADS Service Hub

Differently from SAPScript and SMARTforms,

with Adobe Forms communication errors can occur

(e.g. ADS patching, offline backups, upgrades)

Agenda

Combined and competitive products

Adobe Forms

IFbA - Adobe Interactive Forms

Rich Enterprise Applications (REAs) with Adobe Flex

Adobe Interactive Forms – scenariosOnline (Adobe Acrobat Island for Web Dynpro)

Suitable for signed or well-known modules

Active Components Framework (ACF) -> Zero Client Installation (ZCI)

Pre-requisites? Cross-browser? Speed? Digital Signs? Locale? Patch-Level?

SOA (Adobe Acrobat as RIA integrated with SAP via WS)

Suitable for intranet

Good SOAP support

Offline (eMail based Application)

Suitable for internet (outside the firewall)

Distribution->Filling->Loading

SAP as eMail server (mx record) is often not appreciated

SAP PI eMail adapter solve previous problem polling from an eMail

box (an ABAP IMAPI client would be nice)

If SAP PI is involved it can also process incoming XML data

Common

challenges:

• …licensing

• store incoming PDF

into BDS (ECM)

• (eMail) sender

identification/validation

Adobe Interactive Forms - real-life

Sales Order collection for multi-brands Field Sales Representative Winner! Best Order to Cash - Adobe Contest 2009

More than 100 multi-brand wine agents, visit Hotel/Restaurant/Café to promote products of different

suppliers. Via Adobe Interactive Form they collect orders that are sent via eMail to SAP ERP. The list of

wines is updated each season while discounts and merchandising can be freely used. Each agent is linked

to a set of existing customers that should be constantly increased.

Vendor Master Data - Self Registration via Public Adobe Interactive Form

Supplier qualifies itself via a rich offline Adobe Interactive Form with attachments (identity card image)

transmitted via certified eMail and then automatically loaded into SAP SRM.

Vendor Master Data - User-driven workflow based on Adobe Interactive Form

Employees, operating for the purchasing and accounting departments fill the related section of the

eFORM that is exchanged via eMail.

Asset Master Data - User-driven workflow based on Adobe Interactive Form

workers , at construction sites, ask for new assets filling a user-friendly offline eFORM that is then

automatically loaded into SAP ECC.

Agenda

Combined and competitive products

Adobe Forms

IFbA - Adobe Interactive Forms

Rich Enterprise Applications (REAs) with Adobe Flex

18

HTML Adobe Flex

Adobe Flash - …before HTML 5

Flash Island !

19

Adobe Flash - …with HTML 5 and Silverlight

HTML 5 Silverlight

Adobe Flash

http://www.extjs.com/

http://jquery.com/

Flash Island ?

Rich Internet Applications - are they really worth the effort

Manas Dua

Business Card

Company: SAP Labs

Posted on Sep. 16, 2009 12:08 AM in Emerging Technologies,Web Dynpro

Hi All,

With advent of new ( so called cool controls ) like Flash Islands, Silverlight etc developers' headache has also increased.

Keeping in pace with the requirements; SAP also has made some standard controls based on these technologies avaliable for use

to the developer community.

Now even for a simple requirement like displaying data in a bar graph (which can be easily and effectively achieved using Web

Dynpro Business Graphics ) people are using these Islands as they have a jazzy appearance.

But here lies the real problem - Many ( or all ) controls based on these technologies doesn't meet the required Product Standard

Guidelines. One such case is Accessibility Product Standard.

So to achieve both - Impressive Look and Feel and Adherence To Product Standard Guidelines ; Developers now have

to develop two sets of UI's for the same functionality; one using all high end controls and other using basic primitive controls.

This has significantly increased the time involved in development plus it will also lead to more maintenance cost as now more

screens need to be maintained.

I would say that SAP should come up with a set of guidelines suggesting that when to use these new controls. If some functionality

can easily be achieved through normal web dynpro controls then use of these new generation controls is not at all required...

Commets Invited...

Manas Dua is a Developer for SAP Labs India.

Dos

and

Don’ts

Flash in SAP ?

Points to Consider When Using Islands More development and maintenance effort will be needed

* Specific UI programming skills needed for Adobe Flex or Silverlight (for control developers only)

* Debugging complexity increases

Meeting SAP accessibility and I18N standards is not automatic

*Accessibility

*Co-implementation of an alternative, e. g. based on Web Dynpro native

*Internationalization

*Provide translated texts on the server side and transport them to the client

Performance

*Avoid using more than 3 Adobe Flash Islands on the screen

*Avoid data aggregation on client side

*Provide suitable paging of data

Some standard Web Dynpro features are not provided and must be added

*Value help and field help (can be implemented as usual outside the island, however)

*Configuration and personalization

Users might realize that two different technologies are at work

*Different styles

*RIAs (Rich Internet Applications) behave differently from SSR (Server Side Rendering) applications

Two development infrastructures are required

*IDE not integrated into SE80

*SAP versioning and transport mechanisms not before upload of application into MIME Repository

…in response to

the previous blog

[Thomas Jung ]

Flash Islands vs. WD – added value !

Layout

grid layout is the basic Web Dynpro UI layout (rows/columns)

Flex support layout Canvas (X/Y)

Flex support layers (overlapping objects)

Flash Islands vs. WD – added value !

Graphics

Web Dynpro supports basic graphical models

Flash Island supports advanced interactive graphical models

A number of amazing interactive graphical models are available as custom

component (free of charge or with a limited cost)

Flash Islands vs. WD – added value !

Xcelsius

A generated Xcelsius component is a perfect example of useful Flash

Islands

Flash Islands vs. WD – added value !

Bridge to the Adobe Livecycle Data Service APIs

Bridge to Cloud APIs

Flash Islands vs. WD – added value?

Stateful on client

Flex may use the client RAM and CPU power to:

locally Scroll and Sort a DataGrid

locally Search an object of an ArrayCollection

…and thus, a Flex Shopping Cart with minimum interaction with the

back-end can be very appreciated

Flash Islands vs. WD – added value?

Keyboard events

Web Dynpro supports InputField Suggest Values in 7.02

Flex listens any keyboard event. Useful for responsive applications that react on arrow keys, Esc

Mouse events

not supported by Web Dynpro

Flex listens any mouse event (even wheel rotation) and can manage a lot of states like rollOver, rollOut

Animations

Web Dynpro supports few predefined animations (menu, dropdown)

Flex support transitions (blur, move, resize,wipe, fade…) even with easing function (bounce real physical effect)

Adobe Flex – tips

Think as a software engineer - Cairngorm is a good MVC framework

Think as a team - Subversion (SVN) works fine

Think multi-layer - UI objects can be layered

Think Parallel - service calls (HTTP) are asynchronous

Think internationally - I18N requires a bit of attention (see demo)

THINK

ABAP