DTR and PAR Files

[Former Member]

At the moment our developers are looking for a versioning tool for managing their PAR files, this being the case I wondering if this can be done via JDI under scenario 1.

Is this complicated to configure is this really straight forward? Any documentation on this will be greatly appreciated as well.

-John

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

John,

We are also working on migrating our portal par files to nwdi. We only have about 15 pars, so we are going to convert them to use the component model (DCs). From the conversions that we've done so far, we have found some small issues that we think we'll be able to get around. (For example, currently nwdi is not finding our resource property files. It seems to expect xlf files.) So, for us, it makes sense to tackle these issues now, but it will require some time.

In your case, it sounds like the NWDI Development Scenario #1 (DTR Only) could provide what you need for your current requirements. In this case, you just use the DTR functionality of NWDI. Here's a link to the SAP Doc:

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw70/helpdata/en/38/33eb9c3e1fe2409a9eba8246b933ca/frameset.htm

Good luck,

Deb

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Deb,

Thanks for the reply, I suspect that we will run in some problems as well when we start using the component base model, I will look over the documentation for using scenario #1 and see if this helps.

-John

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi John,

I was working with EP7.0 sp11, and I was able to work on par files using NWDI, I got some problem and I called SAP, they said, SAP wont support for that and in futture versions they dont support this. I think DTR is not the good idea to tack .par file changes.

Regards

Praveen

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

SAP probably does not support this, because a PAR file is a build result and it's always better to version the sources, not build results. Hence you'd best convert your PAR's using the wizard provided when you create a Portal Application Standalone DC. This wizard provides the option to read a PAR file and extract all the sources from it and put these under DTR version management.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Pascal,

I guess I will address the fact that PAR files are build results and ideally sources are versioned and not results. The problem I am having is that our developers do not know how to put par file in deployable units for component base development and convincing them have been a challenge.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Only some input (I'm not the portal developer), but a par is nothing more as the build result of a portal project (an really nothing more than a special kind of war with some xml descriptors and special project structure, and everthing in ecllipse consits of files). Why don't your developers check in the portal projects into DTR. So everthing is under source control (and you could check everything in into DTR, I use DTR for MI applications). You could check in every type of project into DTR ('cause DTR only versioning files, and in eclipse a project is nothing more than a structured representation of files).

And as I understand you need only a versioning system and not the full blown up NWDI with central build and transport management (... and if I had about 1000 pars to convert to DCs, I#m on your site, I wouldn't do this).

Regards,

Daniel

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Daniel,

Now this I can relate to, the question now is will this work for storing eclipse projects in DTR. As for DTR, the process of storing projects in DTR is pretty straightforward I take it?

-John

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi John,

Sharing a project in the DTR is pretty simple: Just right-click the project and choose DTR -> Share Project... from the context menu. NWDS will then request the user to logon (if not done yet) and then request to select a workspace to store the project in.

This means that you first need to create one or more workspaces in the DTR. You can do this with the DTR Admin plugin of NWDS, which is disabled by default however. To enable it you only need to rename plugin.xml.disabled to plugin.xml in the eclipse/plugins/com.tssap.dtr.client.eclipse.admin_2.0.0. Restart NWDS after renaming the file.

You can now create workspace folders and workspaces in the DTR perspective.

Kind regards,

Pascal

Message was edited by:

Pascal Willemsen

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Pascal, In the same token other developers can access this project that is being stored in DTR very easily, right? Will the version project have a unique name of some sort after being checked out from DTR?

-John

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

All developers can browse the DTR perspective and create projects from folders stored in the DTR (right-click a folder -> Create Project). The Create Project wizard allows developers to choose their own name for the eclipse project, with the DTR folder's name as default.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Pascal, what about the versioning aspect of DTR, once the project has been created in DTR, is there functionality that will version the projects stored? And is so, will other developers noticed the versioning aspect of other projects being stored in DTR?

Thanks for replying

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

NWDS is DTR aware, meaning that it will come up with Activity creation dialogs etc. once a developer tries to edit versioned sources. Other developers can 'sync' their sources from the DTR at any time. This will update all non-modified local sources to the versions in the DTR. NWDS can even show overlay icons on the sources in all views that list sources, indicating their state in relation to the DTR.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks Pascal, this is very clear!

[Former Member]

Hi John,

I dont exactly know if you could use DTR to version portal application projects(par projects). I dont think we can do this (but not sure).

Assuming you cannot use DTR to version pars, you will have to convert the par projects to DCs.

Converting a par to DC is pretty simple and can be done in no time. Also the dependencies in the SC is also no big deal.

Dont know if this is helpful to you.

Good luck.

--MLS

[Former Member]

You can use JDI as version tool for par files but it should be a DC i.e., it shud be a portal application <b>DC</b> not just a portal application project.

It is similar to web dynpro DC. Just make sure all the required SCs are added to the software component in the track.

[Former Member]

Laxmi,

Here is the problem, my developers have gotten use to PAR file(s) (~1000) development and don't want to got thought the trouble of organizing the PAR files into deployable units as DCs with SCs dependencies.

It has been brought to my attention from another thread that, developers need to organize DCs into deployable units for SCs and copy the content of PARs into DCS, it this alot of overhead for them to do?

I mean we are talking about 1000 PAR files.

As for DTR, how would they go about storing their PAR file inside DTR for versioning control?