If you've been following this little series I'm sure you noticed that the score at the end of the Becoming an SAP Web Developer, Part III blog was SAP 3 and Web Developer 1. Now some of you might ask if this is a good thing or not but I am here to tell you that it is. You see, originally we wanted to figure out what was the right development path for us. I mean if you look around there are quite a few languages to use with this little software package called SAP.
As well as several ways to develop using each. So for us, our little marathon of pain taught us to look closely at what we are currently doing and try to find the way that best suits us.
Since we use Java as our standard Web Development language we were then able to to eliminate the others, of course not ABAP though, since we are not planning on jumping full steam ahead with NetWeaver just yet and there is just no way we are going to be able to migrate all of our ABAP work over into a Java platform. At least not easily, ABAP stays as well. In time I'm sure we'll be attempting a migration but in reality I think that we'll be with ABAP forever 😉
So after working with the BSP's we realized that the power that is sitting there is something to take a closer look at. We have the comfort of the websites for the user side as well as the power of the ABAP in the background, combine that with some nice Themes, MVC, Java servlets, Java classes, JSP tags, XML, CSS, HTML, DHTML and creative thinking and you've got a pretty nice setup.
My personal opinion is that BSP's will be the Web Developers tool of choice as it's a familiar platform and easy to get into and see a result right away. Of course there are some drawbacks, aren't there always? For those of you who are used to coding everything straight into the page or for those, like me, who like to "trick it out" with JavaScript and DHTML. But as always, there are ways around every little problem. Finding them can be a trip though. Then again, after the NetWeaver congress last week in Frankfurt, Germany, this NetWeaver Studio is looking mighty interesting!!
Each of you will of course have to decide for yourselves but for us at this point in time we are moving forward with the BSP track. We can design them to run inside of iViews or on our Portal system, when it finally comes out of our test phase that is 😉 and they can also run as standalone applications right away. To be honest that was the biggest point for us. We need to get some things up and running and we don't exactly have the time to wait for 6.40 or our Portal to go Productive. Perhaps you are in the same boat?
So all in all I would say we are now circling around Walldorf waiting to land, but at the same time we've got enough fuel to stay in our current holding pattern for awhile. Perhaps the runway for NetWeaver will free up sooner for us!!
