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Scripting Languages Tool Preview

former_member583013
Active Contributor
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Ok, this new thread is for posting about the Scripting Languages Tool Preview. Any comments, thoughts, ideas, contributions?

Greetings,

Blag.

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Answers (3)

Answers (3)

Former Member
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> About RFC: we're currently working on it, stay tuned until TechEd Amsterdam.

Hi!

Unfortunately I wasn't able to make it to Amsterdam, but I've been watching this thread to see if there were any developments. Do any of you guys who were there have any news?

Thanks,

Catherine

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Sure, though I, too, wasn't there myself

We made quite some progress and implemented some BAPI functionality. You can now access an ABAP system, filter out the BAPIs you like and import them into the locally stored metadata very similar to the way Webservices are handled.

Generation of scripting programs is currently implemented only for PHP. But the other languages will follow.

The latest version will be available here on SDN soon. We're just removing a few minor bugs we noticed.

Since this is a big and complex topic please don't expect that everything will be available and every service works directly in this first version. We are aware of some problems, and have quite some ideas (and also issues) on our list. So this surely won't be the last version we make.

And thanks for your post. It's good to know people are interested and eager to see a new version

:Frederic:

Former Member
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Does the current version work with Eclipse 3.2.1?

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John: as Frank said, we'd love to see generators for other languages - like JavaScript - in future. But we don't want to create them all alone. So here's the deal: we create the framework and some generators for the most widely-used languages and you cool guys on SDN build on that and create other generators, other viewers, anything you think is useful. And for all questions or problems we (SAP Scripting Team) will offer all the help we can. I'm very looking forward to see what will evolve from this

This works two-way. It's you who have year-long experience in all kind of scripting languages - combined it's much more knowledge than we can have. So when I face a scripting problem during generator-creation I'll just ask for your help here

Piers: no, it did not arrive. Please send again. I checked my profile and the mail-address was just not set to 'visible'. Your's isn't, too

About the 'integration': it is a clear goal to let it work inside other frameworks (Eclipse-based). As we do not have or use all of these I can just assume that it'll work just fine using the standard Eclipse mechanisms. Scripting in a Box is definitely a good candidate for this, and I myself use it for testing both tool integration and generated scripts.

Bundling - we thought about this, but there might be legal issues, so we have to wait for an official approval. Meanwhile it's not that complicated just getting SiaB and installing the tool afterwards

:Frederic:

johna69
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
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Have the instructions on how to create a generator been posted? I am itching to look at it.

JohnA

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I'm sorry, this article has not yet been posted.

We are currently quite busy implementing the changes for BAPI accessibility. This made it necessary to change a few parts in the core API. These are minor changes, but still we'd like to have them settled and the article reflecting it before publishing.

I'll keep you informed

(and we'll make sure we have it available for TechEd/Amsterdam)

:Frederic:

johna69
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
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Hi Blag,

I have had the pleasure of presenting the scripting tool at TechEd. It is really (I can't emphasize really enough) easy to use. The install is a snap and then creating a PHP function based on the service is via a nice wizard.

I have an idea for a blog and will use the wizard (not my beloved vi) to create the code.

JohnA

former_member583013
Active Contributor
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Hi John:

I'm really sad because I wasn't able to see you live -:(

I just can't wait for your blog! As you say, the installation is fair easy...But as you may know...WebServices are still not on my bag of tricks...So your blog would be really helpful -;)

Greetings,

Blag.

Former Member
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Hi,

the real power of the tool comes from it's extensibility. Everyone can write new code generators or complete tools on top of the metadata provided as the result of importing SAP-Interfaces/Content. With the current tool version one can only write new generators with Java. The question is: Should we provide functionality that one can write code generators also in a scripting language - so that one can write a PHP generator in PHP to call a BAPI?

Regards,

Frank

Former Member
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Hi Frank -

I have not actually been able to get the tool working - I am not sure if it is the R/3 version that I am using (Linux Eval), or not - it throws up a wsdl parsing error.

However - I have been giving the idea of an SAP (generic) interface browser some thought.

Firstly - to address your question about language of the generator - I would have thought that it will be considerably more complicated to bind in individual scripting language converters, than to develop an agreed translation format supported in each of the Scripting Languages. To some extent this allready exists in the various connectors as they use the standard fucton modules like RFC_GET_FUNCTION_INTERFACE* to determine the interface definiton. Note: this is the basis for the dynamically typed scripting languages to add methods, and attributes on the fly to cusomise for each FM.

eg (Ruby).


itab = rfc.discover("RFC_READ_TABLE")
itab.query_table.value = "TRDIR"
...

The itab object representing RFC_READ_TABLE has dynamically added a method query_table that is an accessor for the parameter object representing QUERY_TABLE.

...The real power of dynmic typing.

So - a common format - passed to each Language connector that in turn translates to the appropriate internal magic?

Regards,

Piers Harding.

Nigel_James
Active Contributor
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Sounds like a plan Frank but what sort of other features do you have on the boil? RFC connections would be up there for me ( and Blag ).

Also call me silly but I still havent been able to successfully get it going in E3.2. I extracted to the zip to the plugins directory but could not see any new items in the 'New' menu in eclipse. What am I looking for? docs? Screenshots?

TIA,

Nigel

former_member583013
Active Contributor
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Yeah Nigel...RFC connections is what I'm looking for -:)

Have you "enabled" the plug-ins? I don't remember right now...But I think it's one the Properties Tab...After that you the Scripting Languages Layout and can start calling your WebServices...

Greetings,

Blag.

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Piers: actually we didn't test it against a live R/3 system yet. Could you please mail me the (complete) WSDL which is giving you troubles, so that we can take a look?

Nigel: please use the Update Manager to install the plugin. Go to "Help / Software Updates / Find&Install / Seach for new Features to Install" and add your downlaoded ZIP file in the dialog "New Archived Site". Press Finish and follow the wizard.

You can then open the SAP Scripting Perspective (Help / Open Perspective).

You're right, there seems to be no entries in the Overview and What's New pages of the Welcome Page. I asssume there were some changes between Eclipse 3.1.0 / 3.1.2 and Callipso. We'll look into this and make sure the next version will have it

About RFC: we're currently working on it, stay tuned until TechEd Amsterdam. We'll keep you informed about our progress and are very happy to receive such an amount of feedback.

:Frederic:

Nigel_James
Active Contributor
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Frederic,

Thanks for that. Worked like a bought one. Now if only I had access to a 640 system ...

Looking forward to Amsterdam. Release early, Release often. Looks like you guys come from the Bazaar.

Nigel

johna69
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
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One I would like to see is Javascript generation for accessing a service.

Another option would be a code generator for nusoap (or other) to support Web Service consumption in PHP4.

I also installed the addon to Eclipse on OS X without any problems.

I was in the processing of creating some PHP code to generate PHP code for accessing Web Services (much like saprfc_test.php) when I was given access to this tool.

JohnA

Former Member
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Does SAP provides SOAP access to RFC for all SAP Systems? If not, would SAP vote for open source standalone SOAP-to-RFC adapter?

Former Member
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Hi Frank -

Im thinking that this forum is not the best place keep track of feature requests, decisions made, roadmap planning, project charter, documentation etc for an OpenSource project of this size.

Is it possible for you to setup a wiki (I beleive that there was a wiki initiative underway at SAP - Brian McKellar?), that can be contributed to? This would augment the forum which is fine for discussion, but no good for recording outcome etc.

Regards,

Piers Harding.

Former Member
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Hi Frederic -

I've emailed the WSDL to you - not sure if it got there though, as your business card on SDN has no email address.

Regards,

Piers Harding.

Former Member
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Another potential main -

Have you considered how this will integrate with the existing Scripting Language plugins (if at all), such as Pydev, EPIC, RubyEclipse, RadRails (uses the Ruby editor AFAIK), PHPEclipse - it seems to me that you have potential integration points in just about every direction.

These are also the basis for Scripting-in-a-box - is it a goal to bundle these all together ?

Regards,

Piers Harding.

Former Member
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Generating Java-Script for Service-Access is definitly one future direction we also have in mind. However, everyone can start right now to write such a generator. We will provide an article "How to write a generator-plugin" very soon in SDN.

Frank

Former Member
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Hello Piers,

This is an important point you are making. As a scripting developer I am in an environment (for e.g. a perspective in eclipse) and would not like to leave the environment to get the code snippet for accessing the SAP RFC. Hence its very useful that we are able to generate the SAP access code in the environment where we are.

I assume this is already possible to certain extent. Frank any comments?

Thanks,

Bala.

Former Member
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Hello Frank,

I am waiting for the generator. As important the generator is, it would be good if we can write new connectors (I mean the part which accesses the meda data from the backend system (for e.g. RFC meta data). I know there is a web service connector as well as new BAPI one coming soon. But I am sure we will have many more data sources for e.g. BW cube.

Thanks,

Bala.

Former Member
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Hello Guys,

The tool so far provides a easy way to access SAP data. An important question what next after accessing the SAP data. Can we think about code snippets for UI templates like list / detail to render them?

Thanks,

Bala.

Former Member
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Hello Frank,

I was using the scripting tool and I have a suggestion.

While generating code for a specific language, the first step is

a) Select the language

b) select the options for generating code

c) generate.

Would not it be better that we change the process to

a) Select the options to generate code

b) select the language

c) Generate

This will give us the ability to reuse the options screen, vs doing the options screen multiple time for different languages.

Thanks,

Bala.

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Hi, Balamurugan

actually the idea is that you can plug in totally different generators which would need different options (and thus a different UI). That's why we first let you select the generator (or any plugin) you want to use and then display the fitting UI for exactly this generator.

And since the languages are usually quite different from each other (and most users probably only want to use one language anyway, perhaps have not even the other generators installed) each generator generates only one specific language. So with the choice of the generator the choice of the language is already made.

But you're right, common option screens - like where to store the generated files - should be reused. We actually do provide such possibilities, for example the DefaultFilenameUIProvider and the AuthorizationUIProvider (each contributing a single page on the wizard) are in the common UI and can be used by any generator. Other common pages can be shared similarly.

:Frederic: