SAP and 'Scripting'? You might ask: What does it have to do with each other? In the past there was limited support from SAP for the 'Scripting community'. This will change now. As one part of our activities to address the needs of the scripting community we have started to build an Eclipse-based tool to • provide a framework for simplifying the access of SAP data for any kind of scripting language • as part of an architecture of participation (open source project) let the developer community extend the tool (e.g. writing connectors and code generators) But what is new here? Is it just another tool in the SAP-Netweaver landscape? I’ll try to answer some of the basic questions… What does the tool provide to a ‘Scripting’ developer? • Repository-Browsers for common SAP backends (ESR, R/3 BAPIs, R/3 WebServices, SAP-XI, etc.). • Scriptcode generation to access SAP backend services and content including security features. • Plugin mechanism to allow the scripting community to develop their own plugins for other scripting languages. • Pluggable code generators allow the community to add further useful functionality (e.g form generator) • Eclipse based tool for simple integration into Eclipse based 'Scripting-IDE’s' (e.g. PHPEclipse) • Support for existing 'Open Source' SAP - Script language connectors (e.g. PHP-RFC) Which scripting languages does the tool support? • The first version of the scripting tool will provide some basic support for PHP, Ruby, Perl, Phyton. • The tool is open to support every script language. Is the tool free? • Yes, the tool is free. Can I contribute to the tool and the tool development? Yes, please! • The tool is currently available as a testing and evaluation version, but we will make the tool open source and available on a central place. • One major goal of the tool design is to make it extensible. So you can write your own extensions to all core funtionalities of the tool. How do I get the tool? • You can download it from SAP developer network download area https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/downloads -> Technology How can I give feedback to the tool? • There is a forum in the SAP developer network Scripting Languages Every kind of feedback is welcome. This is just a rough overview about the idea of the ‘SAP scripting tool’. We will continue with a series of more detailed articles describing how to use and to extend the tool.
