Design Studio 1.4 Client tool – First View
SAP has released the much awaited Design Studio 1.4 for General Availability. These are my first impressions about the client tool, from an admin perspective. The new client has major performance upgrades and a number of new features as well. The most notable ones are the 64-bit version of the client tool, SAP’s own custom JRE for Design Studio, custom add-on for streaming data and a new folder view for ‘Technical Components’.
New Architecture (64-bit)
Finally, SAP has come up with a 64-bit version of the Design Studio client tool. I hope this will help reduce the memory issues we have had in the existing 32-bit version of the client tool.
64 Bit – Client Tool
Start Menu – 64 Bit Client tool
In the developer guides, SAP recommends that component developers use the 64-bit version of the client tool.
Bundled JRE
The JAVA runtime environment plays a key role in the tool’s performance. Earlier versions of Design Studio work with the default JAVA JRE, which is generic and not very suitable for Design Studio’s unique requirements. Now SAP has replaced the generic JAVA VM with a custom JRE. This comes bundled with the installer and gets installed in the same directory as the client tool. This should fix issues related to JAVA performance and memory issues, in the client tool.
JRE folder within DesignStudio directory
SapDesignStudioVM
SapDesignStudio.ini file – Pointing to custom JVM
Custom add-on – Streaming API
The most notable feature of Design Studio 1.4 would be the support for streaming data, that would help developers create real-time dashboards. This feature is not bundled with the client tool by default, however it is provided as an add-on. SAP calls it the ‘Real Time Extension’ package.
The custom add-ons are split in to two categories
- CVOM – Chart extensions
- Extensions for the tool
To get the streaming data add-ons to work, we need to install the ‘Real Time Extension’ package. See steps below, to achieve this.
1.Select “Install extension to Design Studio” from Tools menu.
2.Select the “DSREALTIME” package and click ok to continue. You can download it from the SAP support portal.
3.Select the functionalities from the list and click finish.
4. Now the tool will prompt for confirmation and will ask you to accept the “License Terms”. Once you complete this, the addon will be installed and tool will prompt for restart. Restart the client tool and you have the addon available for you.
This “Real-Time extension” adds three components to the tool.
1. A Streaming Data Source
2. A Timer Component
3. A Time Based Line Chart under “Additional Charts”
Technical Components
A new folder is available now for the ‘Technical Components’. This folder contains the text pools, global scripts and context menus used in the application. This will help developers organize their technical content.
Technical Components
Global Script Window
Look out for a more comprehensive analysis of all that Design Studio 1.4 has to offer, from the admin perspective….very soon !
Happy learning!…
Good insight on 1.4
Really interesting, this new feature seems promising. I'll try to integrate it in some custom components.
Did you face any problems using your 1.3 Design Studio Applications on 1.4?
We will go live with Design Studio in Feb, 2015 and did not decide wether to upgrade now to 1.4 or to stuck with 1.3 for a few more month. Tipps are welcome 🙂 Thanks in advance!
Hi Christine,
We did not face any critical issues while upgrading Design Studio 1.3 to Design Studio 1.4. However if you use any custom addons, please make sure that they are compatible with 1.4. I would recommend repackaging the custom addons with 1.4 SDK and use the new version for migration.
Thanks,
Poovin.
Thanks Poovin, for you advice!
Hi Poovin,
Is there a 32 bit add on for DS 1.4. Our landscape is a 32 bit and i dont see 32 bit in the market place to download. Any advice on this.
Thanks,
Raj
Hi Raj,
I guess your question was about BI Platform server addon. If that is the case, we don't have 32-Bit server addon. BI Platform and its addons are purely 64-Bit.
If your query was about DS Client - Component addons (custom components), they are not architecture specific. Only the client tools is architecture sepcific and these addons are placed as jar files inside config directory. So they work irrespective of client tool architecture.
Thanks,
Poovin.
Any suggestions for connecting 64bit Design Studio to BI Datasource? We've been fighting with this for a long time and although connection via sapgui works OK, we get a 'Connect to SAP gateway failed' error with no additional information from DS. Up-to-date on our patches and sapgui 7.40 installed. The JCO logs also include no helpful information for troubleshooting. Thanks.