Flash Components for Visual Composer 7.0

Flexibility is the name of the game

How many times have you found yourself thinking – “Well, if I could use my own control here it would make my application even better”

We at the SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer 7.0 Development team understand that there is no limit to human creativity and therefore decided to give you – the creative developer, the ability to embed external Flash components into Visual Composer!

Introducing “Flash Components”, a new cool feature that enables you to embed your own custom built Flex 2 based component, or even better, an Xcelsius 2008 dashboard component into Visual Composer storyboard, and hence – to extend the predefined set of standard UI elements that are supplied in Visual Composer.

Upon uploading your new component into your Visual Composer 7.0 environment – you could interact with your Flash Component as if it was part of the Visual Composer out-of-the-box set of controls, i.e. you could configure it’s properties via the configuration panel, connect the data-ports, and use it side-by-side with the already existing Visual composer entities. hence creating exactly the Visual Composer application which you envisioned.

This new and exciting feature is already available on NetWeaver 7.0 EhP1 (7.01) SP5 onwards, which means that it will be officially released by the end of September 2009.

In order to better understand the process of embedding Flash Components in Visual Composer, you can check out the Flash Components – Developers Guide.

You could also find some examples of Xceslus 2008 based Flash Components here

and also – TechEd 2009 demo here

15 Comments

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Former Member September 22, 2009 at 1:59 pm

Hello,

Very interesting blog,I have tested the Xcelsius components but I have a 403 error when I try to access the developer guide.
Could you please fix that problem.
Regards,

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1. Former Member Post authorSeptember 22, 2009 at 11:22 pm
  
  Hi,
  
  Thanks for the heads up, the document will be availible within 24 hrs.
  
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  1. Former Member September 23, 2009 at 12:53 am
    
    It’s OK now, I have the document.
    
    Thanks.
    
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Former Member September 28, 2009 at 2:29 am

Amir,

Thanks for the excellent document. It certainly opens up some new opportunities.

I have a question though. Where does the .zip file containing the component file get uploaded to in order to view/use it in visual composer?

I have a requirement to generate a PDF document from my flash dashboard and we are planning to create a custom component to do this as I haven’t found a way to do this using standard features in VC.

Regards
Herman

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1. Former Member Post authorSeptember 29, 2009 at 12:54 am
  
  Hi,
  
  it’s uploaded using the Flash Manager dialog (which is by the way – the second screenshot from the top)
  
  you can also read more about it in the Visual Composer online help.
  
  I’m intrested in hearing more about your project, I’ll appreciate if you would contact me via e-mail, it will be my pleasure to help you.
  
  Best Regards,
  
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  1. Former Member October 15, 2009 at 11:31 am
    
    Hi Amir, Today we got SAP’s presentation for our FICO. Bad thing is company is not going for BOBJ at this time. But FICO biz folks liked flash dashboards and asking us to do in VC.
    Question: Can I use NW 7.01 SP5 for VC with Flash Components for Production use?. Does SAP support it for production use??. I am working on SP stack upgrade plans now… Send me detailed materials.
    Thx a lot…
    KDReddy
    
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    1. Former Member Post authorOctober 17, 2009 at 10:39 pm
      
      Hi,
      
      The answer is of course “Yes”, all of SAP NetWeaver releases are meant to be used anywhere -QA, DEV, PROD – and are fully supported on all levels.
      
      You can contact me via amir.mimran@sap.com, for more information about Visual Composer 7.0, and the Flash Components feature.
      
      Best Regards,
      
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Former Member October 1, 2009 at 3:24 am

Amir,

When I download the trial/preview version of the composition environment 7.1 EHP1 or 7.1 SR5, do I then also have the functionality required to use the flex components in Visual Composer? Or is this functionality not included there and will I need something else?

Tom.

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1. Former Member Post authorOctober 1, 2009 at 6:18 am
  
  Hi,
  
  as mentioned, the Flash Components feature is available on 7.01 SP5 (NetWeaver 2004s Enhancement Pack 1, SP5)
  
  however, on 7.1 EHP1 there’s a way to create a Flash Black Box in the WebDynpro runtime (i.e. “Webdynpro Flash Island”).
  the downside in this method is that the runtime is Webdynpro (less sexy), the process to embed the island is longer, and less components can be displayed in a single application.
  
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  1. Former Member October 2, 2009 at 12:18 am
    
    Ok. Do you think it will make it to the CE7.2 preview? I am fairly new to Visual Composer, so I wonder how I create a black box in the WebDynpro runtime… Is there any material out there that explains how to do this? Your help is greatly appreciated. Thanks, Tom.
    
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Former Member October 5, 2009 at 7:00 am

Hello Amir,

this technology looks great, but I’ve got a problem running it.

I successfully imported one of your Xcelsius samples into the model, added a submit event and deployed it. No warnings or errors.

But when I run the app the new flash component isn’t started. It just comes up with a small icon on the top left corner.

Any idea?
Thanks
Stefan

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1. Former Member Post authorOctober 5, 2009 at 7:03 am
  
  Hi,
  
  are you running on a non-windows server?
  we recently found an issue regarding that.
  
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  1. Former Member October 5, 2009 at 9:40 pm
    
    Hi,
    
    thanks for the quick response. It’s NW 7.0 EHP1 SP5 with Linux and MaxDB.
    
    Regards
    Stefan
    
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    1. Former Member Post authorOctober 6, 2009 at 12:15 am
      
      Hi,
      
      I’m afraid this is a known issue, that we recently discovered and it is solved in future releases, please open a support ticket, and you’ll get the appropriate fix.
      
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Former Member January 7, 2010 at 11:57 pm

I export several Xcelsius flash example components into VC7.01 SP5 on windows 2003 server and oracle DB(We only upgrade VC components to 7.01.05, ohter EP components still 7.00.20 version).
after compile,I only see a simple square in web page.Detail information please review the topic:
Re: VC model including flash component is not visible in run-time.

I have tried to open the Xcelsius source file with Xcelsius 2008 SP1 and redeploy flash file and rezip and reupload file to VC, it doesn’t work.

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