This document provides architectural recommendations for structuring and implementing composite applications. It does not focus on specific technologies like Business Process Management (BPM), Web Dynpro, or the Composite Application Framework (CAF), for example. Instead, it is intended to answer questions about how to structure a composite overall and what to consider when designing composite applications.

Authors: Andrey Hoursanov, Bernhard Drabant, Bogdan Vatkov, Emil Simeonov, Erik Dick, Jens Ittel, Kesavaprakash Vasudevan, Matthias Steiner, Nikolay Kabadzhov, Penka Tatarova, Ulf Fildebrandt, Ulrich Keil, Volker Stiehl, Prasanna Kumar Reddy, Harald Schubert, from SAP AG.

Caffeine is a toolset that allows execution of the ABAP language on alternative runtimes outside of the ABAP server. As of today, it supports the execution of a subset of ABAP on the JVM (Java), Dalvik VM (Android), iOS (Objective C), and JavaScript. Its core design is centered around high performance, multi platform execution and multi threading.

Caffeine is at the moment a prototype project and proves the claims made. There is currently no relation to any current or future SAP product, but SAP is working on achieving this.

What’s it for?

Caffeine is a technology, not an application, and it can thus be applied to many use cases. Caffeine is not trying to enable the migration of existing ABAP code to other platforms, but is focusing on adding value to SAP’s On-Device, On-Demand, On-Premise strategy by making SAPs business programming language reach into spaces like mobile devices that our customer are looking to unlock and feed with information coming from the customers backend. Caffeine strives to help developers to build business applications that are better integrated from frontend to backend.

Download Full Paper

Alvaro Tejada Galindo, also known as @Blag is a Senior ABAP Consultant from Lima – Perú. He started learning programming at the age of 20. He started with Visual Basic 6.0 and C++ and he also learned some Pascal, Euphoria and Java. In the past 10 years, Alvaro has been involved in ABAP development, also learn scripting languages like Ruby and PHP.

In this post, similarly to what he did back in 2007, 2008 and 2009, @Blag compiled a list of what he considered the best and most useful SDN posts in 2010. Let me also take this opportunity to thank @Blag for his contribution, it is really very useful besides it’s what I consider rich content.

Ranting

• The Grinch who stole the Questions - Julius Bussche
• Geek’s Dictionary: What is the Walldorf Kiss of Death? – Thorsten Franz
• Kiss of Death for Web Dynpro Java – The Follow-Up Questions – Thorsten Franz
• Can we reinvent the grey haired ABAPer? – John Moy
• Should SDN be used for cross-blogging? – Michael Nicholls
• “Request-A-Blog” from a SAP Mentor – Richard Hirsch
• Goodbye Simplicity, Hello Obfuscation – &SAP_EDIT – Chris Paine
• A Blogger’s Carol – Jim Spath

WebDynpro

• Silverlight Islands in Web Dynpro Java 7.20 – Yariv Zur
• Wave Islands in Webdynpro ABAP – Uwe Fetzer
• Web Dynpro ABAP: Display tiff images – Elvez
• ABAP Class using Singleton pattern – used in WDA Enhancements. – ashish shah
• Web Dynpro Forms using HCM Processes and Forms – Brad Pokroy
• The death of Web Dypro Java has been greatly exaggerated… – Wolfgang Hilpert
• Technology Stability in a World of Constant Change – Michael Bechauf
• WebDynpro UIs – Usable? - Pete Lagana

Beyond SAP

• Are there SAP user groups in Latin America? – Jim Spath
• Meet the Mentors – Alvaro Tejada Galindo
• Ode to Marilyn Pratt: Honoring the Advocate on Ada Lovelace Day – Moya Watson
• Twenty Four ^2 – Jim Spath
• Consuming ABAP Webservices in Flex – Neil Gardiner
• SAP Mentors setting the tone for consulting? – Dennis Howlett
• I too want to become a famous blogger – Muthu Ranganathan
• SAP SDN Blog Reader for iPad, iPhone and Android devices – Helmut Tammen

SAP Developer Network

• SAP Mentor Monday: Highlights 2009 from SAP Mentors – Mark Finnern
• Turning a new page… – Craig Cmehil
• My UNOFFICIAL underground SCN promo fan video – Chris Solomon
• Meet David Branan Community Support Angel – Marilyn Pratt
• Powered by YOU: SCN By The Numbers – Mark Yolton
• Congratulations to the current Topic Leaders (2009-2010) – Laure Cetin

Business Server Pages

• Single Sign On to BSP pages – Holger Bruchelt

Emerging Technologies

• smartJSON – Lightweight JSON Library For ABAP – Wiktor Nyckowski
• iPhone App for searching HELP.SAP.COM – John Moy
• Mobile Augmented Reality in SAP – Ivan Femia
• SAP River, Gateway and more at Innovative Community Day Bangalore – Dipankar Saha

Community Projects

• unofficial Timeline of SAP – Sergio Ferrari
• Community Project ZGEOCODE – Gregor Wolf

Business Process Expert

• Want Fries With That? – Martin Lang

Widgets

• SAP Mentor Directory 2010 – Anil Bavaraju

Beginners

• Web Dynpro ABAP on TV for beginner (Hello World) – Holger Stumm
• Video: Why & How To Blog on SAP Community Network? – Natascha Thomson
• Growing in your SAP Career – Somnath Manna
• Asking Good Questions in the Forums to get Good Answers – Rob Burbank

ABAP

• ABAPdoc v2 – Onno Bagijn
• Macros – Good or Evil? – Gerd Rother
• Twibap: the ABAP Twitter API – Uwe Fetzer
• The ABAP Workbench and the Test-Driven Development Cycle in EHP1 - Stephen Pfeiffer
• xlsx2abap – Read and edit your Excel files from ABAP – Ivan Femia
• Enterprise Geeks to planet earth: “Houston, we have a problem” – Dennis Howlett
• Against All Odds – Programming of Communicating (S)ALV Grid Controls – Uwe Schieferstein
• Re-learn ABAP: Transition from Procedural to OO ABAP – Eric
• Calling a function module is now FM Droid – Raúl Vides Mosquera Pumaricra
• abap2xlsx – I’m no longer a baby, I grow up and now I’m a fully featured tool – Ivan Femia
• Just When You Thought You Knew Everything about ABAP Date Calculations… – Rob Burbank
• Calling a function module (abap code) – Raúl Vides Mosquera Pumaricra
• ABAP Trial Version 7.02 available in SCN! – Horst Keller
• ABAP Testing and Troubleshooting Tools – Which Features Are In Which Releases? – Olga Dolinskaja
• ABAP Debugger Scripting: Basics – Stephen Pfeiffer
• ABAP Debugger Scripting: Advanced – Stephen Pfeiffer

Carreer Center

• Nuke that code, let us start over – Vijay Vijayasankar

Standards

• SCRUM as example for new approaches in application development – Marcel Salein

SAP Education

• How do you know the consultant you get is the consultant you interviewed? – Kevin Wilson
• SAP Certification: The Certification 5 Report – Dennis Howlett
• SAP Communities, SAP Mentors, what’s in it for me ? How to convince my boss to
  let me access it ? (SAP Inside Track debriefing & Invitation to TechEd Networking Sessions) – Martin Gillet

SAP SAPPHIRE

• Where will you be ? – Abesh Bhattacharjee
• Blue Shirt Brigade aka SAP Mentors at #SAPPHIRENOW #ASUG2010 – Mark Finnern
• Sapphire Now 2010 in Orlando – My First Sapphire – Simon To
• My Sapphire experience @Orlando and the people who made it special : Part – 1 – Abesh Bhattacharjee
• My Sapphire experience @Orlando and the people who made it special : Part – 2 – Abesh Bhattacharjee

Higher Education

• SAP Mentors, Certification Five geek out with Bill McDermott – Dennis Howlett
• I would get SAP certified if…. – Vijay Vijayasankar

CRM

• Create your own BOL Object – Harel Gilor

SAP TechEd

• Why I want to go to TechEd – Chris Paine
• #nataschatoteched: An SAP Mentors case study – Ted Sapountzis
• Zen and the Art of Community – David Hull
• Life After Demo Jam – Matt Harding
• SAPTechEd in Vegas…Win, lose, or draw? – Susan Keohan

Community Day

• A Scrapbook of SAP Inside Track Vancouver – Jason Cao
• We made it! SAP Inside Track Istanbul – Abdulbasit Gulsen
• SAP Inside Track Sydney, Australia 2011 – Graham Robinson

Service-Orientes Architecture

• Semantics of Web Services – Tobias Trapp

Business Intelligence

• The BW – HANA Relationship – Thomas Zurek

Mobile

• SAP’s Mobile Strategy: Really? – John Appleby
• Caffeine – ABAP to Go – The Motivation – Daniel Vocke
• Android and RESTFul web service instead of SOAP – Michael Hardenbol
• Mobile apps or HTML? – Tobias Hofmann

Open Source

• Barcodes in SAP with the Barcode Writer in Pure Postscript. – Robert Russell
• Call a function module in the ABAP Editor: Stop Crying – Start Laughing. – Andrea Olivieri

Analytics

• What does SAP mean by “In-Memory”? – Ethan Jewett

SAP xApps

• Release : SAP MII Backuper v 1.0 – Abesh Bhattacharjee

Code Exchange

• Creating your own project on Code Exchange – Rui Nogueira

SAP Business Workflow

• What not to WF – Susan Keohan
• Santa baby, hurry down the chimney tonight… – Susan Keohan

Source: blag’s SDN weblog

SAP StreamWork is now available as a mobile application for the Apple iPhone. Users can keep collaborating with their teams and driving activities forward, even while not at their desks.

The SAP StreamWork mobile application is delivered with settings to access your internet-based SAP StreamWork application, and also has prebuilt integration to your device. With the SAP StreamWork mobile app, you can manage SAP StreamWork from your mobile device so that method content such as notes, pro/con, discussion, decisions, quick poll, and consensus can be easily shared and securely administered among all SAP StreamWork participants.

This application has many exciting features, such as the ability to view team member profiles directly within an activity, to start a phone call or send an e-mail, taking advantage of iPhone native functionalities such as easy use of media files and voice notes. Below ate a few screenshots of the SAP StreamWork mobile app for iPhone in action:

Extend SAP StreamWork to your entire organization: Enterprise Edition

The enterprise edition of SAP StreamWork promises to bridge the gap between people’s demands for easy-to-use, quickly available software and access to enterprise information, and IT’s challenge in delivering enterprise data to cloud applications securely. SAP highlights this framework as being secure, quick to install, easy to manage and easy to extend.

It includes all the teamwork capabilities of the professional edition and adds advanced security, automatic provisioning, and a foundation for integration with your enterprise applications. It’s an affordable enterprise solution that works with your existing IT investments – and provides the flexibility to allow your business users to work the way they want and be productive immediately. Compare all editions.

Further reading and Download links

Today I am excited to announce another new content area in the SAPLAB.org blog. The “SAP White Papers” co-branded website contains literally hundreds of free offers which are provided to you on behalf of SAP.

According to our partner RevResponse, all publications ate free because “while subscriptions to all the trade publications on the TradePub.com web sites are free, some publications offer a limited “free trial period” followed by a solicitation for a paid subscription should the reader wish to continue receiving the magazine. TradePub.com never invoices for subscriptions“.

Let me highlight a couple of included white papers:

Better Answers Through Better Questions – Learn what differentiates SAP BusinessObjects Explorer from BI tools you may be using now….

The Impact of Technology on Cost in Business Process Outsourcing – Gain insight into the true cost of business process outsourcing (BPO)..

… among many others. Go on, start browsing and give it a try by clicking here or click the option on the top navigation bar named “SAP WHITE PAPERS“. Hope you like this initiative.

SAPLAB reader Bruce Zivan sent us an email message suggesting to include an interesting fact sheet. For all of us who are involved in large SAP implementations, working with clients that work hard to keep in high SP levels, these are some curious and interesting facts that we can learn about. They will show us a broader picture in terms of the impact that certain SAP Support Packages have in an SAP module.

The original message was the following:

Dear Mr. Caldas,

Since I believe you are running SAP ERP 6.0, I thought you would be interested in this new SAP Support Package Stack 17 Fact Sheet.
This Fact Sheet contains important facts and impact estimates that could help you prepare for implementation.

You can download the fact sheet here: http://go.panayainc.com/rs/panayainc/images/SAP_Support_Package_Stack_17_Fact_Sheet.pdf

Please let me know if you need any more information.

Regards,

Bruce Zivan
Business Development Executive
Panaya Inc. – Cut 50% of your SAP upgrade cost with automation software.
Tel US: + 1 415 329 0200
E-mail: bruce.zivan@panayainc.com
Web: www.panayainc.com

Even though this e-mail might have some commercial purpose, nevertheless I considered this fact sheet useful to share it here in SAPLAB.

Gingle is an SDN community user which posted a series of very useful weblog posts. As soon as you start reading the posts, you can see that some of the challenges described by Gingle are familiar. Whoever has tried the endeavor of installing a Mini-SAP, installing a Netweaver Developer Workplace or simply installing a SAP MaxDB Instance, you’ll know that sometimes things can get ugly. In my opinion, the easier the How-to, the better chance we have in a successful installation.

In this post I include some links to external sources like SDN, as well as some links to some of my own posts, hoping to help anyone who’s trying to accomplish an SAP product installation end to end.

1. Netweaver Sneak Preview (NSP) installation – Part 1

Gingle starts his series of posts by explaining which components are necessary, how and where to download them and how to unzip them, etc. The post includes a series of comprehensive screenshots and step-by-step approach to guide you into success.

2. Logical System & Virtual Machine – Part 2

Continuing his previous post as described in point 1., Gingle explains how to setup the Logical System and Virtual Machine. Again, Gingle was thorough in his explanation, including step by step details and lots of screenshots to help us progress.

3. License & Profiles – Part 3

In this post, the whole License and Profiles procedure is well explained and documented. Well done Gingle!

4. Transport System – Part 4

Probably as a SAP Consultant, you never had to deal with this kind of configuration. Just in case you need it.

5. HTTPS & Sapcrypto – Part 5

What is HTTPS & Sapcrypto? Learn about and also why and how you should configure it.

6. SPAM & Kernel – Part 6

Gingle intended on importing some transports and performing some upgrades, SAP always recommends the Support Package Manager – SPAM, to be the latest. Learn how.

7. Upgrade to SP6 – Part 7

This post explains which component versions to consider, how to download them and how to install them. Again, step by step approach and lots of screenshots.

8. BI Content – Part 8

According to the author (Gingle), after a successful upgrade to SP6, it seemed only natural to attempt to install BI Content.

9. The CE2 Installation- Part 9

In this post, Gingle explains how to install the Netweaver Composite Environment 7.2 Trial Version.

10. Install a Local SAP Netweaver Developer Workplace

A detailed explanation on how to successfully install your own local SAP Netweaver Developer Workplace. Please be sure to go through the necessary prerequisites.

11. How To Do a Support Package Stack Upgrade – Part 1

Learn how to apply a Support Package upgrade on your system.

12. How to Tune the Performance of KM

This SAP How-to guide provides recommendations for improving the performance of Knowledge Management (KM) in SAP NetWeaver 2004.

13. TREX Installation on EP7

This how-to tutorial explains the TREX Basis Installation as well as the some post configuration activities, needed for the TREX to work.

14. How to Use Portal Session Notification with Your Own Custom Applications

The SAP Enterprise Portal offers a mechanism called Session Release Notification. This feature is used by SAP applications running inside the portal to close their sessions in case the user closes the browser window, navigates away from the application or logs-off from the SAP Portal.

15. How to Install a SAP (Max)DB Instance

Learn how to easily install a SAP MaxDB Instance.

16. Configure Single Sign-On (SSO) on the Portal and the ERP

Learn how to easily configure Single Sign-On (SSO) on the Portal and the ERP.

17. How Many Lines of ABAP Code In Your System?

This is just a fun and easy way to benchmark how many lines of ABAP code exist in your system.

18. How to do a System Trace?

When you work with SAP Enterprise Portal, sometimes it’s useful to use the System Trace tool, enabled by the ERP system.

19. Single Sign-On with your SAP OSS User

If you have a company issued SAP OSS user and use it all the time (like myself), this post is for you.

20. Configuring SAP Connect (SCOT)

From SAP WAS 6.10, SAP directly supports SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol). This means that the emails can be exchanged directly between SAP system and any SMTP compliant mail server. Learn how to configure it.

21. Configuring UWL for Guided Procedures on C.E.

This tutorial covers the configuration of the Universal Worklist (UWL) for Guided Procedures actions. It shows how to configure the UWL in the SAP NetWeaver Composition Environment when the Guided Procedures are executed locally.

22. Configuring UWL for Guided Procedures on C.E.

This tutorial covers the configuration of the Universal Worklist (UWL) for Guided Procedures actions. It shows how to configure the UWL in the SAP NetWeaver Composition Environment when the Guided Procedures are executed locally.

Please comment if you found this post useful! Many thanks in advance.

The Best of SAP Sites Directory is a great resource if you’re looking for information on SAP, ABAP, Netweaver, FICO, SD, MM, PP, downloads and other SAP tutorials and user guides.  The Best of SAP Sites Directory blog is owned by eddai, who is also blogger and owner of SAP DOCS.

The Best of SAP Sites Directory is a SAP topics aggregator since it displays headlines from the most popular SAP sites on the internet.

Eddai leaves his welcome message:

This site is the dashboard for the latest web-buzz, a single page that encapsulates up-to-the-minute headlines from the most popular SAP sites on the internet with a purpose of getting a quick glance on updates over various categories. The lists will be enhanced in each categories by day. Hope you find this site useful.

Click here to enter Best of SAP Sites Directory

Each month in 2009, SAP presented a set of white papers and research reports designed to give all of us a wealth of practical knowledge about business and technology issues that support our client’s organization’s key business objectives.

This collection of documents are really useful, not only allowing us to gain insights from industry experts, but by also explaining how to get more out of SAP solutions and services. The papers also discuss best practices, lessons learned, and the subjects that matter most to the businesses. Topics include:

• Making faster and better decisions and sustaining growth through IT
• Business agility and organizational readiness
• Supply chain, sales and marketing, and human capital management strategies
• Operational excellence and end-user performance
• Improving customer relationships and creating superior client experience
• And much more.

Beginning today, all of these valuable resources are available at the Best SAP Content of 2009 resource page. But you can also download them directly from SAP’s website here in SAPLAB.org. Please look at the descriptions and links below:

Forrester evaluates four methods you can use to measure the business value of IT. Learn how you can account for more than simple financial metrics like ROI, IRR, or NPV. See how you can capture valuable, intangible benefits like revenue potential, strategic fit, and improved customer satisfaction.

Source: SAP6VX4QNQPY67F

There are several ways to bring data to Manager Self-Services (MSS) that serve any business purpose. You can use the out-of-the-box services that are shipped with the MSS business package. You can start tweaking the configuration or you can also create new services from scratch that are tailored to your business needs.  In most cases the given opportunities to tweak a configuration are not sufficient or simply not available and applications totally built from scratch are often not covered by the budgets available. But sometimes you can find both in one single tool – the generic iView. This simple service allows you to compile data in a tailored way, feed MSS and make managers happy.

Now I mentioned it – generic iView. What is that? A generic iView is a service that allows you  to display data that has been compiled by a SAP query on the SAP Netweaver Portal. The vehicle for the data generation is the  SAP Query tool. Application champions in SAP HR are probably already familiar with this powerful tool that is already available in the SAP R3 box. You don’t need to buy it. The same applies to the generic iView. It’s for free, you just need to use it.

Now we arrived at the point were you are probably raising the question – how can I use it, what do I need to get it done? In the following section I will try to provide you with a proper answer and a clear how-to guide.

First of all you need to know the basic components of this tool.  Basically you need to take care about three essential steps:

1. Create a custom variant for the generic iView service
2. Create or define SAP queries that suit your business need
3. Prepare the portal content and attach it to MSS

Before we start we need to check the pre-requisites – basically the authorizations you have on your SAP system. In order to perform the steps mentioned above you need at least the following authorizations:

ERP System (or Backend): Adequate profile to work with SAP query and read HR data.

Portal: Content Administrator and Self-Service Administrator roles.

Now you are well prepared to continue.  Please follow the instructions below:

• Log in to your SAP portal.
• Go to Self-Service Administrator > Portal Content > Content provided by SAP > srvconfig
• Go to folder com.sap.pct.erp.srvconfig.mss > Generic iView > FPM Applications

• Right mouse click on Generic iView Test Application and press Copy




• Go to your customer name space on the portal content directory and Paste as Deltalink (very important)
• Right mouse click on the pasted application and select Change ID
• Enter a new name, ID and prefix for the application (very important)
• Save your changes
• Go to folder com.sap.pct.erp.srvconfig.mss > Generic iView > FPM Views




• Repeat steps 4. and 5. for all view objects
• Go to folder com.sap.pct.erp.srvconfig.mss > Team Viewer > FPM Views
• Repeat steps 4. and 5. for all view objects

Now the first Part of the endeavor “generic iView” has been accomplished. More to come in the near future. I hope you will come back and follow up on this hopefully interesting article.

About the author

Christian Popa (cristego) is a SAP HCM, Self-Services (XSS) and Netweaver Portal Expert, having several years of experience in Global IT and SAP Projects. Click here to view Christian’s full profile.

This official Performance Best Practices guide for SAP NetWeaver Portal 7.0 provides a practical as well as conceptual information to help customers improve portal performance. The guide encompasses a variety of portal-related areas, including configuration guidelines for the server and the client, portal runtime aspects, navigation topics, the Portal Content Directory, as well as hardware sizing information.

To access the SAP official page for this topic on SDN – Click Here.

Here’s your opportunity to get it in PDF, just click on the download link below.

This section contains available tools for SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence only. Please access our Download page in order to download SAP NetWeaver Main Releases or SAP NetWeaver Composition Environment.

Downloadable Tools for SAP Business Intelligence

Now by utilizing the UI API provided as part of the SAP Business One SDK and the Crystal Reports .Net Winform viewer, any user of SAP Business One can access and run the reports published securely on to the SAP Business One menus.

BI widgets on AIR is a prototype of an Adobe Air Rich Internet Application that delivers personalized business intelligence (BI) information for everyone. With BI widgets users can quickly and easily search and access BI content, create personal dashboards on their desktop, and integrate BI content into other Windows applications using drag and drop.

With the SAP BI Java SDK you can build analytical applications that access, manipulate, and display both multidimensional (OLAP) and tabular (relational) data. The BI Java SDK consists of a Java application programming interface in Java class libraries, documentation, and examples. The applications you create can access, manipulate, and display OLAP and relational data from diverse data sources. (BW 3.5 SPS19, 20.8 MB).

XML for Analysis (XMLA) is an open Web service interface designed specifically for OLAP and data mining functions. SAP Business Information Warehouse supports this emerging industry standard as of its 3.0 release. The download provides a simple XMLA client that is written in JavaScript and embedded into an HTML file (based on Business Information Warehouse 3.0, 1 MB).

This download package offers a simple Wizard to create and maintain User Interface Patterns based on SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence Web templates. Currently, the Wizard for the “Information Consumer Pattern” (delivered with BI Content 3.5.2 Add-On) is available. (SAP NetWeaver BI 3.5 SP3, app. 6.8 MB).