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Enhancement possibilities of Java Developments

Former Member
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Hi, all!

Does SAP provide an enhancement concept for it' s Java application within NWDI side similar to its ABAP development? Something like BADIs, customer exits on screens, customer includes for data structures a.s.o.? Something that would enable a customer to enhance either a SAP Java app or a ISV app without modification?

Regards,

Thomas

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Answers (1)

Answers (1)

Former Member
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This totally depends on:

- If the application is available for NWDI development

- The design of the application

Former Member
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Hi, Pascal!

I don' t think this is a matter of NWDI as it only allows to deal with modifications when updates from the Software Vendor are imported. What I' m talking about would be possibilities for source code, data structure and tables as well as UI enhancements in the means of ABAP development.

The possibility to add own Coding by implementing Interfaces, which' methods are called on certain points in the delivered source code, and so do not have to worry about SPAU (ABAP modification tool) any more - BAdIs a.s.o.

Regards,

Thomas Wuercher

Former Member
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Again, this is subject to the application's design: If the application does not have these kinds of interfaces defined, it will never work. On the other hand, Java works very differently than ABAP: In Java you need to deal with the classloader, which means that you cannot just implement interfaces in your own classes, put them into a jar and expect this jar to be loaded for your application.

Former Member
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Of course, but - let me again stress the comparison with ABAP - the SAP development model offers these concepts on the ABAP-side so the developer doesn' t have to deal with that kind of problems any more.

That' s what SAP has become famouse for, and in many conversations I had with customers most of them argued against Java because this different way of working. Many customers expect a SAP application - regardless, if it' s implemented in ABAP or Java - to be easily enhanced and thereby adapted to their own needs without having to deal with problems in further updates. Most of them don' t care about classloader issues.

Former Member
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Hi,

This is a though question, and I think many share your concern (including me to some extent) regarding the TCO for Java applications.

SAP has provided little help in this area, in fact the primary tool is a visual diff extension in NWDS, allowing you to compare new version with the old. This is especially difficult with NWDI, since the diff tool has no concept of modelling differences which may impact multiple files. I believe this diff tool also has some auto-merge possibilities

There are some Java EE applications which are delivered for NWDI and are structured well into different DCs (CRM comes to mind). Here there are clearly defined guidelines on when to create new classes, and generally your changes are better separated from the core SAP provided code (still not 100%).

With regards with the classloading stuff, this is handled better and better, as there is a system of custom classloaders which can clear out loaded classes as needed. Doesn't always work, but most of the time.

Cheers

Dagfinn