Why SMP and Why Not

Hi,

Recently, i was exploring few options for a giving up a solution architecture to one of my customers who needs a mobile solution which gets synchronized with their SAP back-end system. So i just thought to Blog it for my friends out here and i end up figuring out that there are two major ways for doing this 😕 i.e,

1. Using SMP (SAP Mobile Platform)
2. Using JCo (Java Connector) i.e, without SMP.

So here are the advantages i figured out for both the approaches:-

Using SMP:

• There are Native(Object API, ODATA) and Hybrid application(Html5 based) development approches. The platfrom provides you to develop Hybrid applications easily by drag and drop.
• You can integrate various backend systems easily so that you handle connectivity of systems.
• Be able to create offline scenarios with SUP platform. (Native development)
• You can model your data by creating relations, queries etc.. (MBO development)
• Manage and monitor device users acitivity on Sybase Control Center
• Enable you to configure SSO or Active directory.
• Provides end to end security

Using JCo (Without SMP)

• With Jco you can direclty access to RFC without using web services
• Create only online scenarious.
• You have to make development for each device(ios, android, win8)

That’s all till now i figured out.

However this is an interesting question and if I understand it correctly we are basically trying to understand here whether to use a middleware like SUP/SMP or not or perhaps just use another middleware?

The question can only be answered through some analysis of requirements topics like the following should point towards whether we should be using SUP/SMP or not:

Security

• How sensitive is the data you are planning to mobilise and do you need the extra security mechanisms that SUP/SMP brings 😕 ?
• How do you plan on authenticating your users and will you be able to do that in a large scale roll-out without a box like SUP/SMP in the middle.
• Do you require on-device security enhancements to protect the data you transmit to a device.
• Synchronisation
• Are you planning on synchronising and storing data on the mobile devices and if so have you considered how that sync will happen without a middleware to manage the sync process.
• How do you plan on achieving the synchronisation between your devices and the back-end server (protocols, packaging, parsing etc.)

Synchronization

• Are you planning on synchronizing and storing data on the mobile devices and if so have you considered how that sync will happen without a middleware to manage the sync process.
• How do you plan on achieving the synchronisation between your devices and the back-end server (protocols, packaging, parsing etc.)

Device management

• Do you need the connection/device management brought by SUP/SMP

There are a lot of topics we would need to look at before we can make a decision on this and we will not be able to get a clear answer here without completely understanding the requirements and what we need to achieve. Its also worth looking at how we have delivered other applications (if we have) in your environment including what worked/did not.

I still falls into this scenario again & again while proposing a solution to customers & always exploring the right solution for it. However, i’d always like say Thanks 🙂 to few of my friends out here for always helping me out here like Midhun VP , Jitendra Kansal , Tahir Oz, Brenton O’Callaghan , Carolyn Coad , David Clavey , Rohith Deraje , Kevin Benedict , Thomas Jung

Off course there are other workarounds also available & i’d appreciate if you folks will provide light on this here below 🙂

Best Regards,

Shrikant Naidu