SAPPHIRE update
The Beta trial is now complete (expect some blogs on the subject), and now Red Hat challenged us to demonstrate how well "Ajax weaver" runs on Linux and how truly supportive we are of open-source technology. Well, come and see for yourself, at SAPPHIRE in Orlando, on the Red Hat booth. Or listen to Louenas Hamdi at ASUG, Sessions 1501 & 1907
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"Ajax weaver" is a platform for drag-and-drop based composition of mobile applications on top of web services and no-deployment execution on smart phones browsers. It won the Demo Jam at SAP TechEd 2008 Berlin in October. In this next step to prove itself worthy of productization, "Ajax weaver" engages with up to 10 companies for a Research beta trial. Will you be one of them?
Smart phones for lightweight apps, now!
The Mobility Research group started exploring two years ago the capabilities of the new generation of browsers embedded with more and more smart phones. Combined with the data turn-around acceleration provided by Ajax and the increased quality of wireless networks, the resulting idea was that smart phones could actually be used as flexible, all-purpose enterprise devices. Their browsers could run almost any number of on-line mobile applications for real-time alert, information or decision.
Together with partners, SAP provides pre-packaged mobile solutions for a number of needs. In addition, professional users are getting more and more demanding, as demanding as they are for their private uses. They see opportunities for personalized applications, if only their IT or preferred consultant had a fast, no-development, no-deployment tool.
This is the need that the Ajax Composition Platform intends to address. Now at prototype level, it provides a drag-and-drop composition environment that fetches your web service, prunes it, pops its fields into screens made for your device of choice and lets you link the screens into the flow you have in mind. Templates can guide you, or you may design your features and add custom JavaScript or CSS code for your own specific look and feel.After the design stage, activate your app to make it accessible from your mobile browser. It will run on the middleware provided, with no deployment needed on your device. In the process, it will boast high back-end and device compatibility (and resilience to device evolution) because it is based on web services and runs directly in the browser.
We said: lightweight
From early experiments with users, the trap is to lose sight of the medium, and fall into feature creeping and packing. This platform is meant to help each user address its share of the infamous and desirable "long tail" of applications: specific needs, portability, and rapid deployment. Always keep in sight the core questions: what does my end-user really need? What is the smaller set of information that will make a difference in her daily work? What are the actions he will gladly do on the spot, rather than later in front of a computer screen?
Well, tell us. The tools are there now, but the applications can be defined only by you. In the mean time, this is what the composer and some sample screens look like.
Way to go: hands on the Beta software
The Ajax Composition Platform is better known as "Ajax weaver" – the working name under which it was shown at different conferences – and won the Demo Jam at SAP TechEd 2008 Berlin in October in a joint presentation between SAP Research and first user consultant CERNUM from Belgium. This attracted the attention of partners worldwide, who requested hands-on opportunities. After some smoothing out of the software, this is what SAP Research means to do now:
Providing a variety of partners the opportunity to install, ramp-up and exercise the platform, following their own needs and designing the applications that their own customers are requesting. SAP Research will support them as needed over the month of February. Partners will have the occasion to evaluate for themselves the technology readiness, and also the business opportunity it affords them and their customers.
Find more on Ajax weaver in the Ajax Composition Platform wiki area. More up-to-date information on the Beta trial and the partners involved will be available in time on the trial public wiki page.
And follow the projects of SAP Research at large on the Research and Innovation page.