Why Picking SAPUI5 For Web Development Is Beneficial?

[Former Member]

New to SAPUI5? You want to learn about it but don’t know how to start? Well, you don’t need to worry at all! Today we are going to discuss all the aspect of SAPUI5 and the reasons why should we pick SAPUI5 for web development. This blog will be a great help for both beginners as well as experienced professionals.

So, why we should adapt to SAPUI5 framework?

Let’s dive into the topic to know all factors in detail. So, stick with us to discover the following essentials about this topic;

1. What is SAPUI5?


2. Multiple Technology Flavors used in SAPUI5


3. Why should we go for SAPUI5 for web development?

Let us dig the points deeper:

1). what is SAPUI5?

SAPUI5 is basically a framework that is used to develop web applications in both mobile as well as desktop consisting of a vast collection of JS libraries. But yes, note the point that these JS libraries cannot be used alone. You must have to take into use the CSS along with JS to develop rich and interactive internet applications. SAP has customized and builds its own UI components such as layouts, controls etc. you can control and define custom controls because of its extensive features.

What are SAP Web IDE and OpenUI5?

SAP web IDE (integrated development environment) uses OpenUI5 and SAPUI5 frameworks for developing JavaScript apps and OpenUI5 is the open source version of JavaScript UI library.

2). Multiple Technology Flavors used in SAPUI5:

These are some of the well- known technologies that are used in SAPUI5:

A). HTML5:

As we know HTML 5 is only supported by latest versions of browsers such as Chrome 29, Firefox 24, Safari 6.0, IE9 and Opera16.

• To improve interactive user experience, it includes new set of all Meta tags.


• As we already know that mobile is replacing desktop uses as more and more people are using mobile phone only to access data. So, there are bunch of Meta tags available that support to develop mobile apps.


• Local Storage of user sessions


• Other features that play an important role in the functioning of HTML5 is Drag and Drop, Document editing, Timed Media player, etc. it has native API that allows user to have better interaction with them.


• Flash player is not needed any more as video/ audio is itself inbuilt in it.


• Graphical representations can be added in the web pages because of the SVG feature.


• Interactive elements such as Charts, Diagrams, etc., can be used to show interactive animations on the screen.

B). CSS: (Cascading Style Sheets)

CSS is used for rich appearance for GUI (Graphical user interface) as Color and Fonts can be separated from Web page UI design. It decides how different designs and styles are to be displayed on any of the screen size.

C). AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML)/JSON (JavaScript Object Notation):

AJAX is mainly used for communicating with server. Request that is (XML HTTP Request) is sent as GET or POST and asynchronous response can be received. Also, there are various content types being used such as:

• Text/HTML


• Application/JSON


• Application/PDF

JSON object is used for data transfer. SAPUI 5 is capable of rendering UI control based on JSON object after receiving JSON object response from server. ALSO, JSON makes it possible to store JavaScript objects as text as text is always one of the legal formats to be stored.

D). jQuery:

It is known as "write less, do more", that is lightweight JavaScript library.  The main usage includes using simplified JavaScript on your website. jQuery consists of following features mentioned down below:

• HTML/DOM manipulation


• CSS manipulation


• HTML event methods


• Effects and animations


• AJAX


• Utilities

jQuery is open source java script library, which even simplifies a lot of the complicated things from JavaScript. SAP has their Java Script Libraries as SAPUI5 is build upon jQuery.

E). oData Protocal: (open data protocol)

The main functioning of oData protocol is to provide a REST-based protocol for CRUD-style operations. Crude- style operations includes the following against resources exposed as data services:

• Create


• Read


• Update


• Delete

It helps us to build restful APIs without worrying about the approaches such as URL conventions, media types, payload formats, response headers, status codes, HTTP methods etc. OData consumption across different programming platforms takes place in these 6 steps. Have a look:

• Requesting resources


• Requesting an individual source


• Queries


• Creating a new source


• Relating resources


• Invoking a function

3). Why should we go for SAPUI5 for web development?

These are the some of the reasons why should we pick SAPUI5 for web development:

As we already know that SAPUI5 supports HTML5, so because of it, it possess following advantages:

• Supports both the platforms (desktop as well as mobile)


• Includes interactive user experience like timed media player, drag and drop, document editing and much more.


• Supports audio as well as video


• It follows SVG (scalable vector graphics), with new tag canvas which is used in animation as well as graphical representation such as flow chat, flow diagram etc


• Next, it supports any data transfer such as JSON, XML, oData, etc.


• SAPUI5 is best suited for developing rich and interactive web application as it is extended from HTML 5 and provides several UI controls. As discussed earlier, it consists of customized JS libraries. Due to this, GUI can be designed rapidly and even they can be added in the web pages without much coding.


• Undoubtedly, SAPUI5 is dominating technology because of its much-released products such as SAP HANA, SAP Fiori, SAP Netweaver Gatway, etc. 

Time to sum up:

So, these were some of the Reasons why should we pick SAPUI5 for web development. We are sure this piece of article will help you in many ways. No matter if you are a beginner or a professional, these basic concepts are good to remember to rectify any of the programming confusions while executing.