SAP Web IDE VizPacker Plugin vs. Lumira VizPacker Utility
VizPacker is a cool tool. It provides an extension framework with an associated API that lets you customize existing visualizations or develop your own visualization extensions and integrate them with SAP Lumira or other products. Following are a few examples of such extensions. For more exmaples, please visit Lumira – Open Source Visualization Extensions.
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VizPacker is available in two ways:
- An online version is included as a plugin for SAP Web IDE.
- An offline version for Google Chrome is included with SAP Lumira, desktop
VizPacker plugin was introduced as part of SAP Web IDE 1.6 late last year (Dec/2014). For more information on the VizPacker plugin, please visit SAP Web IDE – Visualizations Without Limits
SAP Web IDE is an extensible development environment with a growing set of embedded tools covering the end-to-end development process. For more information on SAP Web IDE, please visit SAP Web IDE – Overview.
The SAP Web IDE VizPacker plugin lets you rapidly design, build, and deploy visualization extensions based on d3.js. The main benefits of using the VizPacker plugin are:
- Improved developer productivity through wizards, templates, and code editors
- Customize or build visualization extensions
- Source code management
- Testing and debugging
The VizPacker plugin is an additional tool within SAP’s high productivity visualization extension toolset. The VizPacker plugin is SAP’s recommended way to build and customize extensions. Following is a high-level comparison table between the VizPacker Plugin and the Lumira VizPacker that will assist the extension developer to choose the right tool for the task at hand.
| VizPacker Plugin | Lumira VizPacker | |
| Project Setting | ||
| Configure extension settings and layout | √ | √ |
| Configure extension using step by step wizard | √ | × |
| Configure data model | × | √ |
| Upload csv file as dataset | √ | √ |
| Generate predefined folders and files | √ | √ |
| Import/Export project file | √ | √ |
| Pack extension file (.zip) | √ | √ |
| Manually deploy extension to SAP Lumira | √ | √ |
| Offline/local code development | × | √ |
| Coding Experience | ||
| Free style coding | √ | √ |
| Code completion | √ | × |
| Syntax validation (Javascript Linting) | √ | × |
| Find/Replace in multiple files | √ | × |
| Code beautification | √ | × |
| JAM-based team communication with code collaboration | √ | × |
| Revision Control Software integration (Git) | √ | × |
| Testing | ||
| Side by side Quick Preview | √ | √ |
| Customized Preview in different size, desktop, tablet, phone or custom | √ | × |
| Change localization and languages | √ | × |
| Data Binding panel – change data binding | √ | √ |
| Data Table panel – view data value | √ | √ |
| Update data value in dataset | √ | × |
| Debug using browser’s developer tools | √ | × |
| Browser Support | ||
| Chrome (latest version) | √ | √ |
| Firefox (latest version) | √ | × |
| Internet Explorer 9+ | √ | × |
| Safari (Mac) | × | × |
| In-Product Docs | ||
| In-Product tutorials | × | √ |
| API Reference (link) | √ | × |
— Raz
Thank you, this is really helpful.
A question that comes into mind, from a customer perspective, is: would there be any additional licensing costs to move/use the viz design environment under WebIDE ?
Kind regards,
H
Hi Henry,
I waited some time as I was looking to receive the following exciting news:
Last week a new set of HCP packages were released to the market. One of the interesting packages that seems very relevant to the VizPacker is the "HCP Free Edition" package that allows for a free productive use of the HCP, with SAP Web IDE included. For more information on the new packages: SAP HANA Cloud Platform Pricing and Packaging Options.
Other that that, for evaluation purposes, SAP Web IDE is available for free public trial on HCP. For more information visit SAP Web IDE - Overview and SAP Web IDE Developer Guide.
Regards,
Raz
Raz, I could not PM you, but I'll ask you here - I'm finalizing my TechEd presentation on Lumira and Design Studio extensions and was wondering if I could reference this blog and/or use your comparison table in one slide? I'll provide links and credit to your work, of course. My E-Mail is in my profile if you'd like to chat.
Hi Raz,
Do you know how to use the viz packer webide plugin to develop charts for UI5 application in webide?
I successfuly installed the plugin in webide but I am not able to embed sap.viz charts in my SAPUI5 application.
Thanks & Regards,
Tommaso