SAP is making it Way Easier than before

[Former Member]

Almost 6 years back, took my friends advice and started writing on sdn . I didn't know what a blog was, and I was sure no one would read what I wrote. I had no idea what to write and initially blogged about the technical work which I did. Its been 4 years since my last blog was published and now I see a new sdn with a slick new look and feel looking more promising , easy and user friendly (rekindled the blogger in me to come out again), humongous topics, more in depth discussions on technical, functional, business & enterprise aspects, an ever growing diverse and vibrant community - just the way SAP net-weaver products have evolved in last few years . During this period I had the privilege of working on multiple products alongside some of the finest consultants across the globe .

In this specific post i am going to mention about my experience in the sap portal space and the changes which brought in much needed respite for developers and end users . So lets see some of the changes and did SAP really made it way too easier than before for the developers and the entire community in terms of setting up of infrastructure , the product , the user interface and ease of development

• I remember ( feels like once upon a time ) installing SAP portal and searching for DVD labels to figure out which media is required at which instance (documenting it nicely again) and it was not easy for a person who has not done it before . Installation of clustered environment for a portal required specific skills sets and required lot of research . Yesterday I was trying to install the latest NetWeaver release and has one of the best pleasant surprise ..BOY its way to easy now . click and next next .... finish you have your portal ready ( The typical MS installations :smile: ) . They have gone one Step ahead now you can have NetWeaver on cloud .

• Did you guys work on Portal 5.0 ? then progress to 6.0 and 7.0 ...each one of them had bettered the previous one . The move from JSP to Webdynpro screens for user management , improved powerful KM , UWL to powl ,  web page composer , the framework , portal on device ,interoperability , ease of development are worth a mention but still I am unable to find a convincing reason to understand why sap portal is under utilized at most places compared to the other suite of products ( Can be a separate long discussion ) . Looking at NW 7.3 portal yes SAP has tried to answer some of the User interface related question posted on its product but still has a long way to go .

• When you think of the SAP user interface experience, what comes to mind? :neutral:   Move from HTMLB the way too boring user interface of SAP to WebDynpro Java to Webdynpro abap and now SAPUI 5 shows the amount of effort which has been put behind to make the framework ready for developers and use out of box features . Does this mean programming has become easy ? Yes from SAP perspective they have made their best by providing IDEs, Profilers, Version Control tools and above all lots of sample examples .
  • Nice read
  • Change in UI strategy : What does that mean, and why is it significant?

• Business process the inevitable core of business and from a business perspective it really does not matter what technology it is running on as long as it provides organization a cutting edge over competitors while accomplishing their ever changing business requirements. All they need is flexibility, security, good designing and better end user experience with user friendly designer with drags and drop functionality to design a business process much faster , Tasks delegation and forwarding .Isn't transition of from CAF GP to CE BPM the classical case of Focus on evolutionary and non-disruptive manner of development . Yet again they made life easier than before .

Then again, when you come to think of it on sdn or google  you would get the sample code but !!! There is no substitute for designing and writing effective reusable and functional code at the same time considering the important things

1. Understanding of the framework ? Why are we using it ?

2. Understand the architecture of the application ?

3. Challenge the design principles ? Can we do it in a better,simple,effective way ?

4. Are we re-inventing the wheel ?

SAP is trying to make it easier for all of us ,at the same time presenting a strong case to increase the level of innovation from a developer points of view . The move towards user centric design mobility and cloud embracing strategy makes it all though more interesting .The roadmap ahead is challenging and change is the only thing that is constant!!!

PS : Let me take this opportunity to thank the SCN team who were so supportive to get my user id and blogs restored