You have just downloaded {code:html}SAP NetWeaver Mobile 7.1 Trial Version{code} and are eager to play around with it? This blog is for YOU then !! In this blog, I will explain some of the key concepts involved in developing mobile applications SAP NetWeaver Mobile 7.1. I will also help you to enable, understand, deploy and run the pre-packaged sample application that came with SAP NetWeaver Mobile 7.1 Trial Version on an emulated or real mobile device. Let's start moving then - we have quite a bit of things ahead of us ... SAP NetWeaver Mobile 7.1 is the latest version of SAP NetWeaver Mobile. Lots of information about the product is out on SDN, SAP Help Portal, sap.com and others, and its futile to repeat all those. So let me just point you to the central sites for you as developer: 0.1. The {code:html}SAP NetWeaver Mobile{code} gives a good overview on new features/improvements and also features excellent eLearnings for NW Mobile 7.1 {code:html}Architecture and Runtime{code} as well as {code:html}application development{code}. 0.1. The NW Mobile 7.1 pages (http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nwmobile71/helpdata/en/ca/6fbd35746dbd2de10000009b38f889/frameset.htm) at SAP Help Portal contain complete product documentation, last not least the developer guide for development of mobile applications running on handheld devices (http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nwmobile71/helpdata/en/45/c9b47db88b5591e10000000a1553f7/frameset.htm). The latter is an extremely rich source of developer information and if in doubt about your newly installed development environment for mobile, check out that link and you'll find what you look for. The same guide is actually also accessible from within NW Developer Studio by choosing Help > Help Contents > SAP NetWeaver Mobile Developer Studio Documentation. h3. Some theory on NW Mobile 7.1 development Ideally, you would now go and watch the development eLearning and browse the above developer guide. If you did, skip the next paragraph or two. If you did not, just some conceptual remarks on NW Mobile 7.1 0.1. The part of NW Mobile 7.1 we are talking about here is for running occasionally-connected mobile applications. Such applicatiions have a couple of technical prerequisites that eventually turn out as technical pieces within your landscape. In NWM 7.1 we have: 1. The application backend is where the application data (like orders, customers, time records, master data etc.) is original. This is typically your SAP ERP, SAP CRM or non-SAP system (or many of them :-). In NW Mobile we expect this piece to be there and extract data from it by help of RFC-enabled function modules or Web Services that implement a certain interface (aka: BAPI Wrappers rules). 2. The Data Orchestration Engine (DOE) is an integral part of NetWeaver AS ABAP 7.1 and serves as mobile middleware. It deals with synchronizing data intelligently between NW Mobile Client and application backend, deploying applications to your mobile devices and closely monitoring them. It is an extremely powerful and scalable piece and the {code:html}Architecture and Runtime{code} eLearning gives a perfect overview on it.0.1. NW Mobile Client is an Java-based application container that is installed on the mobile device. It synchronizes data with DOE and offers generic services to mobile applications like sync, persistence, user mgmt, logging/tracing, app deployment etc. NW Mobile Client looks&feels like any other Windows Mobile application by using the native WM controls for rendering. This is achieved by employing eSWT (http://www.eclipse.org/ercp/) as rendering technology. 0.1. The mobile plugins you installed with NW Mobile 7.1 Trial Version are for developing the client-side of occasionally-connected mobile applications. Thus, the output of your NWDS development will eventually be deployed on NWM Client (and this is exactly what we'll do later in this blog) 0.2. The mobile plugins of NWDS implement a model&code concept for developing mobile application. That is.. * The component model clearly differentiates between components containing local business logic (like read/write access to the local database, validation of data captured in the field etc.) and UI components representing the UI design, view flow, etc. Taken together with the above-mentioned application assembly it is now easily possible, for example, to re-use the business logic components of SAP standard apps but replace the complete (or partial) user interface with a project solution * Both component types are modeled & coded with special modeling tools: Business logic components (aka: service components) are manipulated using the Service Explorer of the Mobile Applications for Handhelds perspective and its related tools. UI components are standard Web Dynpro components and are manipulated using the well-known Web Dynpro development tools (also conained in that mobile perspective). NW Mobile then uses optimized generation templates for generating a high-performance application UI from the Web Dynpro meta-model. For more information on the respective meta-models, continue here (http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nwmobile71/helpdata/en/46/5e387b61690db8e10000000a1553f6/frameset.htm). 0.1. Mobile tools of NWDS deeply integrate with the rest of NWDS by 1. using NWDI Development Components (http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nwmobile71/helpdata/en/49/d0ae143e94774a9423ca8c009dc76f/frameset.htm) as component model for mobile components. Therefore, all lifecycle mgmt features of NWDI are automatically supported for mobile applications also0.1. using Web Dynpro as UI modeling technology. Special care was taken to tune the {code:html}Web Dynpro{code} tools to only show those WD features that are actually supported by the NWM Client Runtime. We find that the service component employee_sc consists of a single, two-level data object (header EmployeeSdoEmployee + item EmployeeSdoAddress), a single data structure, a service including 4 service operations (two queries and two custom methods) and 2 exceptions. For a detailed understanding of the underlying meta-model, check section Mobile Service Component on this page (http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nwmobile71/helpdata/en/46/5e387b61690db8e10000000a1553f6/frameset.htm). Double-click each of the entities in the Service Explorer to open the respective object editors and explore the tool. To open the generated Java code, select an entity and choose Open With > Java Editor. Alternatively, open the Resource perspective and find the generated code in folder gen_oca of the employee_sc component. h5. Understanding the User Interface After successful inspection of the business logic employed in the sample applicatioin, let's now turn to the application's user interface by opening component employee_ui in tab Handhelds UI Explorer. When expanding the tree, we find the following:
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