Building SAP applications for iPhone, Android etc.

[Former Member]

Hi All,

We have a requirement for building SAP online and offline applications for iPhone, Android, Windows phone. These applications would interface with SAP backend (ERP) for fetching data or for executing simple tasks like approvals etc.

We have developed thin client (online) applications using Webdynpro Java for Blackberry users. These applications are browser based applications (deployed on SAP Netweaver WAS) and are accessed through Blackberry browser. What I am not sure is whether the same approach/technology like Webdynpro for Java would work for handhelds like iPhone, Android and Windows phones.

Secondly whether vendors (like Apple) of iPhones, Android etc. provide specific connectors or frameworks for building SAP online/offline applications (or in other words what would be the mechanism for integrating iPhones, Android with SAP)

Lastly how (technology, architecture etc.) are SAP thick client or offline applications built for iPhone, Android etc.

Any pointers would be of great help.

Thanks & Regards,

Suresh

[Former Member]

Hi,

Our ECC systems are on 7.01 release with EHP4 with ABAP stack only. We have few SAP custom transactions that we want

to run on IPhone and IPad accessing the ECC backend data.

What are our options? SAP said that NW mobile does not support IPhone and IPad.

If we can't go the NW mobile way, what do we do to achieve this ? I assume that we do need a system with JAVA stack.

If I install a NW 7.01 Java system , can we deploy the services developed in NWDS to the Java system ? If this works, how can I then run the custom transactions on the IPhone accessing the ERP data ?

Please let me know what exactly we need on the infrastructure and how to go about running these transactions on the IPhone.

Thank you.

Ravi

[Former Member]

Hi,

You can develop excellent web apps for the iPhone using BSP. See the YouTube demonstration of our product, Cohesion Mobile for SAP. You can google "Cohesion Mobile" or go to the address below.

[http://mobile.cohesion.biz]

You can extend our product using ABAP and simple HTML statements. It's a free download for your system and includes five free user licenses.

John Carpinelli

[Former Member]

Hello Suresh,

For an offline scenario at the moment it's only possible to create so called Custom Solution according to the following example / guide for

[Integrating Custom Client with DOE|http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/go/portal/prtroot/docs/library/uuid/30e033a0-73ef-2b10-b291-b653c3b48385?quicklink=index&overridelayout=true]

For an online scenario you should think about a lean mobile scenario like creating your own ws on the backend and the corresponding client on the mobile device.

If you need further advice, tell me.

BR Philipp

Edited by: Kostyra Philipp on Apr 1, 2010 9:13 AM

[Former Member]

Hi Philipp,

Thanks for your quick response. When you say integrating with "Integrating Custom Client with DOE", do you mean the usage of SAP Mobile Infrastructure (now know SAP NetWeaver Mobile).

We are mainly looking at building online (thin client) applications and also parallely at building offline or thick client applications but that is second in priority.

What we have done so far

We have developed thin client (online) applications using Webdynpro Java (which interface with SAP backend systems)

for Blackberry users. These applications are browser based applications and are accessed through Blackberry browser. We are looking at similarly building applications for iPhone, Android and Windows phones probably using the same technology like Webdynpro Java. But we are not sure how well it would work on iPhone, Android etc. Also we were exploring to see if these vendors (iPhone, Android) provide some sort of connectors or framework for quickly developing and deploying SAP mobile thin client applications.

Please note that we are aware that using webservices in one generic approach.

Once again thank you very much for your response.

Regards,

Suresh

[Former Member]

Hi Suresh,

Regarding Integrating Custom Client with DOE, it basically means that you can write your own custom mobile client using DoE as the middleware ie SAP Netweaver Mobile Middleware (DoE for short).

DoE uses http protocol to communicate with client.The comunication protocol between client and DoE is mentioned in details in the document.

I will check and let u know whether Webdynpro online supports iphone.

Best Regards,

Amit

[Former Member]

Thanks Amit for your response.

Do we need to have SAP Mobile Infrastructure (now known as SAP NetWeaver Mobile) in place for building/creating mobile applications using DOE.

Regards,

Suresh

[Former Member]

Hi Suresh,

Yes you would need SAP Netweaver Mobile Landscape.

Webdynpro online doesnt support iPhones.However, I believe the rendering is done using html & xml so it should be possible to render the pages in iphone also.You can test that deploying a test webdnypro app in iphone but SAP wont be supporting such implementation.

I hope this helps.

Best Regards,

Amit