Web Dynpro on WAS 630
Does anyone explain about web dynpro?
What advantage does a company gain out of web dynpro development compared with traditional ABAP development.
I heard that Web dynpro will be available with WAS 630.
Does anyone explain about web dynpro?
What advantage does a company gain out of web dynpro development compared with traditional ABAP development.
I heard that Web dynpro will be available with WAS 630.
Check https://websmp106.sap-ag.de/sapgui
User interfaces/ Web Dynpro.
Web Dynpro
Frequently Asked Questions
Questions
What is Web Dynpro, in the first place, and why do I need it?
What will be the benefits for application developers creating web applications?
What parts or components of Web Dynpro exist?
What do I have to install on the client side to run Web Dynpro?
What components do I need to use Web Dynpro? What release of SAP products is required to run Web Dynpro applications?
Can existing Web applications still be used via Web Dynpro? Or is there a conflict between existing applications and newly developed ones?
Which Web browsers will the Web Dynpro support? What about older browsers, and browsers where JavaScript is disabled for security reasons?
The Web Dynpro runs on a variety of types of device, for example PC browsers, PDAs… Does an application have to be redesigned for each type of device?
What are the main differences between Web Dynpro and the Business HTML pages of the Internet Transaction Server (ITS)?
Many existing web applications today are built with Java Server Pages (JSP). What is the Web Dynpro's attitude to JSP?
What relationship do Web Dynpro and the SAP Enterprise Portal have? Do applications written by Web Dynpro run in the Portal at all?
The screens I need in my application cannot be statically defined. Instead, their layout needs to change dynamically with the data. Does that mean that the Web Dynpro is useless for me?
Answers
1. What is Web Dynpro, in the first place, and why do I need it?
First, you should ask yourself: am I missing something when I try to develop a professional business application for the Web?Most probably you are. You lack performance, the screens of an application may be well designed but lack consistency, updates of an application turn into a nightmare, and the inability to keep the context causes the refresh of complete pages, although just a tiny figure had changed on the page.Web Dynpro might change a lot of that. Web Dynpro is, in short, a set of declarative development tools, that allow a Web developer of enterprise applications to define the flow and the layout of an application. The description of the application is kept in a meta data repository, from where the runtime code is generated for one of the followng runtime environments: Java, ABAP, or .NET.
That means the majority of the code is generic, and thus available for each runtime. It also means that only the fraction of code that is specific to the runtime, like eventing, needs to be programmed. Add to this a usability pattern based development approach, the ability of converting a Dynpro-based transaction into a Web Dynpro application, and a Client-side Framework (CSF) that keeps the context of a running application, and guarantees flicker-free screens, and you have the beast called Web Dynpro.
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2. What will be the benefits for application developers creating web applications?
For the developer switching more low-level approaches, e.g. PHP or JSP, life will be totally different. The Web Dynpro will automatically supply all kinds of generic services to the dialogs in an application: it will define the layout, implement the controls, allow for dynamic features in the (browser-based!) UI, care for data-binding, do type-checking on entries, manage error handling, and much more.But even the ABAP programmer, used to all this service from the SAP GUI for HTML, will find the Web Dynpro an improvement.
The Web Dynpro will supersede the Dynpro in that it allows declaration, instead of programming, the flow of screens in an application, and the hierarchical composition of views on the screen. It will thus provide superior means of reuse: you will be able to reuse patterns in an application - e.g., a wizard, a search widget, etc. -, instead of just a few classes and methods.
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3. What parts or components of Web Dynpro exist?
The Web Dynpro landscape is made up of a set of tools that allow the descriptive definition of meta data of a web application, and of runtimes for these applications, as well as usability concepts that influence the tools.
The meta data describing the application is independent of a particular platform. This is why a Web Dynpro application can run on either a BSP, a .NET, or J2EE environment. All the services that a Web Dynpro application ever needs, form view processor to repository access to user management, are available - possibly as remote services - for all the three platforms. Also, the Web Dynpro screens are composed of a set of predefined controls that are identical for each of the three platforms.Additionally, a Dynpro converter is part of the architecture, converting existing ABAP Dynpros into Web Dynpros that run on the Business Server Pages variant of the Web Dynpro runtime.
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4. What do I have to install on the client side to run Web Dynpro?
All that needs to be installed on the client is a Web browser. On today's desktops and devices, you will find a browser installed by default.
For a certain set of powerful browsers, Web Dynpro supports client-side rendering, together with data binding features. The result are fast response times and flicker-free screens. To use this client-side framework, you only have to allow execution of JavaScript in your browser.
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5. What components do I need to use Web Dynpro? What release of SAP products is required to run Web Dynpro applications?
Web Dynpro will be delivered as part of the SAP Web Application Server 6.30. Depending on the runtime used, you might require the SAP Java Connector (JCo) to connect your Java-based Web Dynpro application to an ABAP-based backend.
The backend release is not restricted, as long as the JCo can make use of the Business APIs of the component.
In the Web Dynpro BSP runtime, JCo is of course not required, and your application can use all available function calls directly.
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6. Can existing Web applications still be used via Web Dynpro? Or is there a conflict between existing applications and newly developed ones?
Web Dynpro is characterized by its declarative approach to design usable Web applications, and by the application patterns and control libraries it offers for that purpose. Former approaches to develop Web applications in an SAP environment, such as Web applications based on the SAP Internet Transaction Server (ITS), are lacking these ingredients. Thus, former web applications cannot be expected to run in a Web Dynpro environment.
There is, however, hope for all applications that are based on the classical SAP programming paradigm, the Dynpro. SAP plans to offer migration tools that allow a conversion of Dynpros to Web Dynpro pages with minimal effort.
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7. Which Web browsers will the Web Dynpro support? What about older browsers, and browsers where JavaScript is disabled for security reasons?
Web Dynpro supports location-independent rendering, i.e. depending on the capabilities of the client, the Web Dynpro runtime will generate the HTML for the browser either on the client PC or on the server. Client-side rendering, using the JavaScript-based client-side framework will be possible for Internet Explorer as of version 5.0 (or higher) and for Netscape Navigator 6.2 (or higher).
Earlier versions of Internet Explorer 4.0 or Netscape Navigator, as well as a variety of mobile devices, will be supplied with output that is rendered server-side. Server-side rendering is also the only choice for browsers where JavaScript has been disabled for security reasons.
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8. The Web Dynpro runs on a variety of types of device, for example PC browsers, PDAs… Does an application have to be redesigned for each type of device?
From a usability point of view, it is necessary that the application fits the properties of the device it runs on. It neither makes sense to have tens of entry fields on a small PDA, nor does it make sense to have a lot of white unused space on a desktop browser.
But Web Dynpro eases the lives of developers of mobile applications to a large degree. They will be able to use the same tools as developers of standard Web applications, and they will be able to use a similar set of controls. These controls "know" by themselves how to behave on a specific device, by the built-in behavior of the control.
Combined with the powerful device and browser recognition of the SAP Web Application Server, application developers can create mobile applications based on Web Dynpro once for a specific device type, and it will run on all devices of the type.
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9. What are the main differences between Web Dynpro and the Business HTML pages of the Internet Transaction Server (ITS)?
For one thing, you will no longer need the ITS as a go-between to connect the client and the application server - although Web Dynpro will optionally support scenarios where the UI runtime sits on a separate box in front of the Web AS. Eventually this different box may even be supplied by another vendor, e.g. the .NET environment hosting the UI for a Web AS backend.
The main difference, however, is in the programming paradigm: Web Dynpro has been influenced by the declarative approach to screen flow that Business HTML introduced, and it also maintains a separation of layout and screen processing on the one hand and application logic and database access on the other. It combines this with a Web-based re-launch of the SAP dynpro's attitude to dialog design, characterized by standard services for dialog processing, data-binding, entry type-checking, and many others.
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10. Many existing web applications today are built with Java Server Pages (JSP). What is the Web Dynpro's attitude to JSP?
The Java version of the Web Dynpro runtime does not use JSPs, but is implemented as a servlet instead. However, it will be possible to integrate existing JSPs in one of two ways:
The recommended way is to import the JSP page into the Web Dynpro tools to preserve its static parts (layout, images, text, etc.) and then replace the controls in the layout by the Web Dynpro equivalents. It will also be possible to export a Web Dynpro layout as a JSP page, so that Web designers can continue to use their favorite design environment to work on their pages.
Where an import of the JSP page is not an option, we will also support a coexistence, i.e. it will be possible to call a JSP from a Web Dynpro application and vice versa.
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11. What relationship do Web Dynpro and the SAP Enterprise Portal have? Do applications written by Web Dynpro run in the Portal at all?
Web Dynpro based applications will be able to run in the SAP Enterprise Portal 6.0 as iView and iFrame. Web Dynpro will make use of the Portal runtime, and support the Portal eventing and services, such as user management.
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12. The screens I need in my application cannot be statically defined. Instead, their layout needs to change dynamically with the data. Does that mean that the Web Dynpro is useless for me?
No, it doesn't. The Web Dynpro runtimes will expose an API for the dynamic creation and manipulation of controls at runtime. This API could then be called, e.g., in an event handler of a view's controller to change the view's layout before the view is actually shown.
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Incho
Thanks
Do you know release date of WAS 630, 640?
I feel WAS 620 less usefull from the web programming point.