Use Web Dynpro instead of writing native iPhone apps?

[former_member226837]

Hi,

to me it seems as if in the whole company we are talking about writing iPhone apps for everything, but we are completely forgetting that we could have it so much easier: Why don't we go back to writing mobile applications using Web Dynpro?

Compared to writing native apps, e.g. for the iPhone, I see more advantages than drawbacks:

1 For most of the apps we are talking about, the user must be connected to the backend anyway, this is no argument for native applications.

2 We could be fast and cost-efficient, as we could reuse most of the existing codebase, may it be Web Dynpro Java or ABAP, and just add a view more views/wizards.

3 We could write the mobile apps once and they will run on virtually any mobile device. Many mobile Web Browsers may not support Flash, even fewer Silverlight, but all Mobile Web Browsers support JavaScript, the basis for Web Dynpro. An iPhone app runs only on the iPhone and you will have to write the same piece of software for Android, RIM, Windows Mobile, Symbian, Palm etc. to get the same coverage.

4 We would get standards compliance (security, translatability, even accessibility) for free.

5 We would not have to extend the backends to provide access to the functionality required by the app e.g. via Web Services (a move which would raise a lot of new security-related questions as well).

6 We would not have to pay royalties to e.g. the Appstore for selling our apps (eek).

7 The code would have a much longer expiry date than native applications, since smartphone APIs and even entire smartphone operating systems come and go in very short cycles.

The only drawback would be that Web Dynpro applications wouldn't be so flashy and "cool" as native applications.

But why not provide several slightly different versions of the mobile Web Dynpro UIs, optimized for the most popular smartphones, e.g. by using simulators as in the iPhone SDK? Then the gap between the Web Dynpro UIs and native UIs would shrink even further, and hand-optimizing Web Dynpro UIs for specific phones is rather cheap (and probably fun).

And, and this would be even cooler - why can't we spend some more money on Web Dynpro (or make it even Open Source) to extend it to be better suited for mobile usage. Better support for Wizards or other page-based UIs would be the first things on my list here.

All in all, I think that especially for the heavily backend-driven software that we would probably want to bring on the smartphones, it would be much wiser to go the more conservative Web Dynpro way, and if we could work on Web Dynpro to make it look better and make it work better on smartphones, it would be even wiser to go for this option instead of spending too much money to develop native smartphone apps.

Cheers,

Ralph

Edited by: Ralph Debusmann on Feb 17, 2010 12:59 PM

[Former Member]

From a technical and financial point of view you are right. But the enduser is not concerned on technical complexity or costs, he is only concerned to get his job done in an easy way.

When he is used to the iPhone, a native iPhone app will be much easier to use for him than a webbased WebDynpro application. And you have far more flexibility to let the user interface look like other native iphone applications, which will be impossible to do in WebDynpro.

And you probably already have your SAP functionality exposed as webservices, so it is not that hard to create a great looking iPhone user interface on top.

[Former Member]

Hi Ralph

I agree with you....

The only problem is look and feel have to be changed for every device. Please try running webdynpro app in iphone browser using sap-wd-client=PieCient and do let me know if something works...

Regards

Vidyadhar

[former_member226837]

>

> Hi Ralph

>

> I agree with you....

Cool

> The only problem is look and feel have to be changed for every device. Please try running webdynpro app in iphone browser using sap-wd-client=PieCient and do let me know if something works...

What's "sap-wd-client" - is it an URL parameter? If so, which values can it take?

Best re

[Former Member]

Hi,

Convert yourself toward a SOA approach and most of your problems will be solved. You will have most of your process or business transactions already exposed as Services. It makes easier to create a "shell" containing the UI.

If you are creating an iPhone App, I would suggest use native iPhone SDK. There's no way the PieClient (Mobile Client) in WDP do 2% of what you can achieve using iPhone SDK. But it's all about what you really need.

My two cents, I wouldn't buy an iPhone if I wasn't going to use it's resources.. Maybe you don't really need an iPhone, or if you really need, go deeper on "why" you need one (I have one just because it's so easy to use, and most of my Applications are native and I don't like to use the browser on it most of time).

Regards,

Daniel