SAP CE/SOA - The first steps?!

[Former Member]

Dear users,

We are in the process of looking into SAP Composition Environment as an addition to our technical landscape. We understand that the main benefit is Service enablement and usage of Adobe forms and well, various others. The appreciated fact that benefits are huge stays intact, but what isn't clear is the approach. And on top of it, we are planning to get the Discovery V4 box very soon to learn the various possibilities.

Having seen quite a few threads on the forums, I would only get information about the specifics and not the approach. A few set of questions here:

1. What is the starting point for development in SAP CE? Is it knowledge of any technical language like JAVA? or is it SAP Netweaver? Eclipse? Any ideas?

2. What is the approach? Example: Learn a language first, then learn a technology like CAF, then learn something else?!!

3. What level of expertise is needed for these starting steps? Example: Should one be a JAVA Pro to work on CE?

Would be much appreciated if one can help us out with the basic approach.

Please refrain from posting links to study material. I hope this thread will only be a place to discuss how different vendors have approached this and what experts think the best practices are. Thanks very much in advance.

Cheers,

Vijay.

[Former Member]

Hi Vijay,

you definitely need Java knowledge, although very simple scenarios can be gone through without any programming at all, using Visual Composer for screens and screen flow.

However, you generally won't need very advanced java knowledge even for more advanced scenarios, as WebDynpro (which is used in such scenarios) has a lot of built in functionality. Finally, although eclipse is the developent environment, SAP provides special perspectives which are completely described in corresponding books, tutorials and the SAP Library, so no special eclipse knowledge is needed.

From my experience, the best approach is learning by doing, i.e. go through some tutorials and / or books on development with CAF, you won't need a lot of special knowledge to get started.

Best regards,

Jochen