Introduction
On April 10th, SAP announced a partnership with Sencha (www.sencha.com) that has several goals. The first goal was to deliver tools which make it easier for a Sencha Touch application to access SAP data using NetWeaver Gateway. The second goal is to provide tools that allow a Sencha Touch application to more easily interact with data (whether it be data from SAP or some other data source) and services via the SAP Mobile Platform. The purpose of this post is to update you on the status of the partnerships and let you know what you can do with SAP and Sencha today.
OData connector
The SAP NetWeaver Gateway allows SAP developers to write code that exposes data from their implementation of SAP to mobile devices using an open protocol called OData. OData is essentially an Atom feed that exposes data in XML or JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) format. The protocol supports filtering a feed based on application or user-supplied criteria as well as the common CRUD (create, read, update, delete) operations expected from enterprise data sources.
SAP and Sencha have delivered on the first goal for the partnership – the creation of an OData connector for the Sencha Touch framework. The connector fits seamlessly into the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture provided by Sencha Touch and allows Sencha Touch applications to easily consume an OData feed – browsing a list of items, viewing details and even updating or deleting content from the feed (appropriate permissions required, of course).
The connector and sample application code leveraging the connector is available now at https://market.sencha.com/users/46/addons/49. The connector is available free of charge and will be supported by the Sencha Community.
We recently published a CodeTalk session with Sencha - you can find the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYtYxifrb20 (updated with new video link 08/13/2012). In this session, the folks from Sencha demonstrate how to use the OData connector within a Sencha Touch application.
Sencha Touch in the SUP HWC
If you’re already using (or thinking about using) the Sybase Unwired Platform (SUP), you can also use Sencha Touch for applications running within the SUP Hybrid Web Container (HWC). The HWC is a native application container for running HTML5 applications and as Sencha Touch is a leading HTML5 framework, it plugs in quite well. Essentially, a HWC application would leverage the authentication, data access and synchronization capabilities of SUP while relying upon Sencha Touch for its UI and MVC architecture.
A whitepaper containing information about how to use Sencha Touch in the HWC will be available online soon, I will update this post with the link as soon as it is available.
If you’re looking for some hands-on experience with this, be sure to attend the SAP TechEd conference (www.sapteched.com) in locations around the world this fall. Talk to the Experts and learn the latest and greatest things on enterprise mobility at TechEd. SAP offers more than 40 hours of training and lectures on mobility alone. Additionally you can test drive the latest developments from SAP and our Partners in the Mobility Zone and talk to the mobility experts. There are plans to offer a hand-on lab that will walk you through the process of updating a HWC application to use Sencha Touch.
Future Plans
To fulfill our long term goal of enabling Sencha Touch applications to connect to back-end data sources through SUP, we’re working to enhance the SUP server so it exposes its services (such as authentication, data access, synchronization, SSO and more) in a way that can be easily consumed by a Sencha Touch application. With this in place, a mobile application leverages the framework capabilities of Sencha plus the enterprise connectivity, security and performance of SUP. Best of both worlds!
Conclusion
So now you have an update on what we’re doing with Sencha. Once I’ve had some time to play with the connector, I’ll publish an article here highlighting how to use the connector to connect to SAP. When additional services are available through SUP, I’ll post additional articles here showing you how to leverage them for your applications.
