SAP Mobile??? What is happenning here??

[Former Member]

Hi All,

I am an old school SAP ABAP Developer who is struggling to keep pace with the latest SAP technologies..

When ever I try(been trying for an year now i guess) to understand SAP's Mobile technologies it only confuses me..

The SAP For Mobile part of the SAP website is also confusing..

Can someone explain in plain simple clear terminology what are the SAP Mobile technologies?

What would be a logical technology to learn, for an ABAP Developer with old school webdynpro, bsp, webui, javascript experience ?

I hear sybase, syclo, agentry, sap ui5, afaria, fiori, cordova, SAP Mobile Platform 3.0 etc etc etc... Can someone explain what is the difference between each of them, why is SAP confusing people with soo many tools if all of them achieve the same results?

I have no knowledge of mobile development but why wouldnt we just use the tools that Apple iOS or Google Android provide for App development????????

How are companies deciding on which tools and technologies to use in the Mobile space?

Are HTML5, Javascript and CSS the only common skills required for all the tools???

Message was edited by: Krishna Krishna

[marcin_cholewczuk · Accepted solution]

Hi,

From start I'm saying that I don't have any project expirience, so it may be that I'm not always right here, but main principles should be ok.

1. Creation of application
  You have 3 possibilities to create an application for mobile devices

     1.1 Web application
          You're creating web site for mobile solution. Every mobile phone with good enough

          web browser can use it.

     1.2 Native application
          You're creating application in native development tool. Android is using Eclipse, Windows

          (visual studio?) and Apple have their own enviorments.

     1.3 Hybrid application
          This is a mix of 1.3.1 and 1.3.2.
              1.3.1 You're creating your application as website.
              1.3.2 You have to create an container/project for native application. You can do this with

                       Apache Cordova. Not going in to details, you're passing params like "I want container

                       for iOS/Android/Windows 8".
              1.3.3 After that you're adding your files from 1.3.1 to project that you've created in 1.3.2,

                       compile and use it as native application on device
 
  Each of these aproaches has it's adventages and disadventages. You should pick one depending on your needs. For example you could write your application as native for Android, but when your client say "I want it also for iOS" then you have a lot of work with conversion, that you would'nt have if you would choose 1.3.1 or 1.3.3
 
2. SMP
SMP (SAP Mobility Platform) old naming SUP (Sybase Unwired Platform). You can use it but you don't have to. In your application with use of API you're connecting with SMP and getting some settings like from where should you get data (application that you've created in punkt 1 is only frontend). You could connect directly to your data source, but if that changes than you have to recompile your application. You can also see here some useful information like data load, number of connections, errors by connections and so on.

3. SAP Afaria
To use it you have to install an application from SAP on your device. With it administrator of Afaria will be able to change settings of your mobile like for example turn off your browser, set some corporate stuff and so on.

4. Other topics
     4.1 To create web site you can use SAPUI5. This is framework from SAP with which you can create frontend with use of HTML5, CSS3 and jquerry.

           You can develop with it in any enviorment, but SAP have prepared some addons for eclipse which makes work easier. For example you've wizard

           which does some of work for you. You have also possibility to send your site to SAP NW server. As far as I know, it's being converted into bsp.

     4.2 SAP Fiori is a set of applications (as I've just read currently about 190) provided by SAP that covers many standard cases. These were written

           with use of SAPUI5.

     4.3 As a data source you can use NW Gateway. It's an addon (?) to SAP Netweaver Server which you can use to provide data in OData format.

If you want to know more I would recomed to go through https://open.sap.com/course/mobile1

Best Regards
Marcin Cholewczuk

[TomaszDygas · Accepted solution]

Recently SAP bought Syclo Company. Syclo made many ready-to-use mobile apps for SAP.

Syclo created Meta-Data Driven (MDD) cross-platform mobile apps.