In the past, it has sometimes been difficult to get recommendations out of SAP on questions on how to structure your applications in order to achieve the most flexibility and the lowest TCO.
SAP is now taking some impressive first steps on rectifying this and it is called the "SAP Guidelines for best-built applications that integrate with the SAP business suite" and is available from http://bestbuiltapps.sap.com/ . The document is represented in the tagcloud shown in the beginning of this post.
Almost all of these guidelines are applicable to the custom development you all are doing on your solutions;SO PAY ATTENTION TO THEM!
The guidelines cover five main areas which should be relevant to all customers. They are listed below with an example of the questions that are answered in the document
- Application life-cycle management
-How do you keep track of problems experienced by the end-users? - Process orchestration and service-oriented architecture (SOA)
-Should I use Enterprise Services or RFC/BAPI calls? - User interface and user experience
-Which user interface technology should I choose? - Data and information
-How do I handle the lifecycle of my information? - Application development
-Which version of the Java Enterprise Edition standard should we develop according to? - Governance and security
-How should we handle identity management?
I am very impressed with how clear and concise the recommendations are and so this is not a complex document to read. In fact I would recommend that all technical personnel working with SAP solutions should know the main document
Actions (TODO for you)
- Read the doucment
- Participate in the SAP Teched session SOA206 Best-built Applications: Technical Guidelines for SAP Partners on Wednesday 3:15-4:15 at 106A West
