Highlights in SAP NetWeaver 2004s – Running an Enterprise Portal

SAP NetWeaver 2004s offers a number of new exciting portal features. In this blog you can find a general overview of what you can expect in the new release and the benefits that you will gain. Functionality that is also down-ported to SAP NetWeaver 2004 is mentioned here in brackets.

The most important news is that we have two new scenario variants for the “Running an Enterprise Portal” scenario:

• Implementing a Federated Portal Network: Organizations can use the federated portal approach to share content between portals. Integrating non-SAP WSRP-compliant content into an SAP NetWeaver Portal is possible as well. Find more information on Service Marketplace and SDN
• Implementing an External-Facing Portal: The SAP NetWeaver Portal provides tools for implementing an external-facing portal for a variety of business scenarios, for both anonymous and registered users. (This variant is also offered in SAP NetWeaver 2004 SP14 and later) Find more information on Service Marketplace and SDN

Many other interesting features are available as well:

• Support Platform: The Support Platform provides system administrators with a Web AS environment in which they can run plug-ins that assist system them in performing the following tasks: Check system readiness for installation, run tests on one or more server nodes, fine-tune and troubleshoot the system (also in SAP NetWeaver 2004 SP13 and later). More info on SAP Help
• PCD Inspector: A support tool with which content developers and advanced content administrators can perform a thorough analysis of objects stored in the PCD and modify them centrally (also in SAP NetWeaver 2004 SP13 and later).  More info on SAP Help
• Integrated Portal Activity Reports for administrators. The feature enables portal administrators to gather and present information as iViews about portal activity, including information about the users who logged on to the portal and about the content that was viewed. More info on SAP Help
• Web Dynpro-based user interfaces for several administration tasks, such as the iView wizard, page wizard, personalization, and user management. Moreover, the new iView wizard now allows you to create portal iViews directly from deployed Web Dynpro applications without the use of an iView template.
• XML Content and Action Tool: Enables the import and export of portal content based on XML scripts enabling automatic PCD-object creation (similar functionality is offered in SAP NetWeaver 2004 SP15 and later). More info on SAP Help
• New standard portal user roles: The Control Center User and End User Core Role provide functionality which could be generally available to end users supplementing the End User Role (also in SAP NetWeaver 2004 SP11 and later) More info on SAP Help
• Web Service Connector: Provides the ability to interact with Web services, regardless of their source (also in SAP NetWeaver 2004 SP14 and later). More info on SAP Help
• Write-Protect Mode for the PCD: When write-protect mode is active, the editors are either not available at all or have limited functionality in the portal. This is especially useful during data migration, backups or updates of the system in order to avoid data loss or inconsistency (also in SAP NetWeaver 2004 SP12). More info on SAP Help
• Accessible Content Administration: A set of interfaces is available for administrators, working within an accessible environment, who need to create and manage portal content. The accessible Portal Content Studio provides functionality for creating and editing selected objects and enables the basic flows required by the administrator. More info on SAP Help
• Portal Object Transport: The creation of export packages for transport between different portal systems now supports the transport of the permissions associated with the objects and the user personalization data available in the PCD. (only available in SAP NetWeaver 2004s, SPS7) More info on SAP Help

For more details on these and other new features, have a look at the feature presentations on SAP Service Marketplace: www.service.sap.com/nw-ep → Feature Lists