Mark Gearhart

Moving to SAPUI5

by admin Posted on May 24, 2013

I am moving on to SAPUI5, and have ending SUP work. I just came back from the SAP Sapphire Conference in Orlando last week. The next step for SUP is to remove support for MBO’s. So, what’s is remaining in SUP? It does seem to be gutted without MBO’s. There is a re-written Sybase Control Center for managing deployment of mobile applications, and there are some Eclipse plugins for building widgets. Big deal. Hmmm, I think. Sounds like a duplication of the bigger and more sophistiated Afaria for Device Management, and a duplication of the bigger and more sophisticated widget sets from Cordova, Sencha, and many, many other free tools out there.

If I had a choice, for job purposes I’d rather learn Afaria and Cordova rather than SUP.

SAPUI5 with XS Engine seems to be the equivalent to SUP, and it is integrated into HANA. I would say that ANYTHING which is integrated into HANA will have infinite support and development momentum going forward. So… on to SAPUI5.

I hope my managers can have more patience with this moving SAP target. It seems like the last 2 years have been nothing but spinning wheels.

Posted in Technical | Tagged hana, job, sap, sybase | Leave a comment

SUP and Me

by admin Posted on April 12, 2013

The Sybase Unwired Platform is in a state of flux. I’ve heard this from several people inside SAP, and now I’ve heard it from our own CTO. The problem seems to be that mobile applications are deployed to a web container, which is a SUP-supplied browser-like client that runs on the mobile device. Apparently, this is not a desired method for deployment. Reports are that customer want to just deploy an HTML5 application without having to run it inside a container. Additionally, SUP contains a middleware server which hosts data from the backend system, and forwards it on to the mobile device. This, apparently, is not a desired method for deployment either because it introduced a platform of hardware and software between the device and the data.

In addition, there are competing mobile development platforms also delivered by SAP. So, we have three development platforms to choose from, SUP, Syclo, and SAPUI5. Who is winning? Looks like SAPUI5 has pulled ahead. It is not a great idea to chase the technologies, because you will probably never become productive. But, if one technology is winding down and the other is cranking up, then there is really no alternative but to follow the trend.

I’ve just release my latest article for the SAP Technical Journal. It deals with the Sybase Unwired Platform, and its ability to operate in an offline mode. In this mode, we pre-load data to the device, and go to remote areas where there is no internet connection. From here, we can call up the pre-loaded data (in this case maps and markers) and operate as if we were connected. Pretty neat. In fact, I think its a great example of exactly how far you can take a Hybrid Application within SUP. Alas, though, this may be my last SUP article for a while. I have been directed to ramp up on SAPUI5 as well. We’ll see what this platform has to offer. Stay tuned.

offlinemaps_500px — Offline Maps Article for the SAP Technical Journal

Posted in Technical | Tagged sap, sybase | 1 Comment

Using the SAP Mobile platform for Google Maps

by admin Posted on March 13, 2013

The Google maps API is not really a new subject for application developers. But, embedding google maps into the SAP Mobile platform is definitely new. It took a little while to figure this out, but the concept turned out to be pretty straightforward. I used the iAnywhere database platform from SAP to create a database of markers containing latitude and longitude. Then I tapped into the Javascript Maps API from Google to download a map and populate it with markers from the database. All of this was done under the SAP Mobile development environment, which let me create an HTML5 Hybrid Web Container that runs equally well under both Android and iOS, without any coding changes whatsoever.

In fact, this proof-of-concept turned out so well that I’ve written it up as the next article to be published in ISUG. This organization has just been re-branded from the International Sybase User’s Group, to ISUG-TECH, which stands for the Independent SAP Technical User’s Group. Can’t say that I’m a fan of the new name. They dropped the “International”, which I always thought was a real nice adjective for the title. But, it really was necessary to revamp the scope of the organization to point more towards SAP and less towards Sybase, seeing as how Sybase was long-ago absorbed into SAP through the acquisition.

I cannot publish the entire article on my blog, since it will also appear in the Journal. To read the article entirely, you will have to be a member of ISUG. You can go to ISUG and join.

There is one special part of a Gold membership. If you become a Gold member, at $299 per year, you also get a fee membership to ASUG, which is the SAP Americas User’s Group. I am not actually sure how much an ASUG membership is. In typical SAP fashion, it all seems to be hidden away, and you have to go through some type if involved company registration. I did find a membership aimed at independent consultants. It is $500 per year. So, if you join ISUG at $299 per year you will get the $500 ASUG membership free.

onlinesupallen_500px — Google Maps and SAP Mobile

Posted in Technical | Tagged asug, isug, sap, sybase | Leave a comment

SAP Mobile Resources

by admin Posted on February 4, 2013

OK, with a company the size of SAP, you would expect everyone to be creating web pages for their own projects. The SAP Mobile Platform is no exception. There are a lot of duplicate sites out there. We’ve got forums, groups, product pages and so on, all with duplicates here and there in function and content. Fortunately, a few sites have trickled to the top, at least as far as my use goes.

As I follow hyperlink trails throughout the internal and external sites, I have made a small list of the sites which have content about SAP Mobility. For the one’s that I use more often than others, I’ve noted them with a “*”.

SAP Mobile Developer Center on SDN
http://scn.sap.com/community/developer-center/mobility-platform

(*) SUP Apps on SDN Code Exchange – code samples and Developer resources
https://cw.sdn.sap.com/cw/groups/sup-apps

SAP Mobile GTM Community –SAP Go-To-Market community (sap.corp)
http://sap-mobile.hosted.jivesoftware.com/community/mobility-go-to-market-community—global

Mobilizing Your Enterprise With SAP on SAP Press!
http://www.sap-press.com/products/Mobilizing-Your-Enterprise-with-SAP.html

SAP Mobile on Twitter
https://twitter.com/SAPMobile

SAP Mobile Platform (SMP) tutorials
http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-8803

YouTube SUP Developer’s Program Channel
http://www.youtube.com/user/SUPDeveloperProgram

Android Training
https://portal.wdf.sap.corp/irj/portal?NavigationTarget=navurl://cfd56d0425fd8ceb2bb2fe77f1eb9b34

SUP Training
https://portal.wdf.sap.corp/irj/portal?NavigationTarget=navurl://4521f0e92f7be329a975cacc57294694

SUP Workflow Training
https://portal.wdf.sap.corp/irj/portal?NavigationTarget=navurl://3200ef475c124e7d1db1c97311c1f3a1

SAP Mobile Platform Development Center
http://scn.sap.com/community/developer-center/mobility-platform/blog

SAP For Mobile
http://scn.sap.com/community/mobile

Services Mobility
https://community.wdf.sap.corp/sbs/community/sap-services-networks/services_mobility

SAP Employee network mediashare, keyword=SUP

(*) Employee-only Internal forum. This popular forum is available only to SAP employees, because there is much discussion about internal efforts. It is basically a site to discuss bugs, and how to do certain things, and how certain things work.
http://mobility-internal.sybase.com

Global Mobile SWAT
http://sap-mobile.hosted.jivesoftware.com/community/mobility-go-to-market-community—global/swat

Value University
http://valueuniversity.wdf.sap.corp:1080/Featured.aspx?view=g&tid=24&crumb=Mobile

Mobility Black Belt training
quick link = https://go.sap.corp/svu-sybase

long link = https://portal.wdf.sap.corp/irj/servlet/prt/portal/prtroot/com.sap.sen.wcms.Cockpit.Main?url=/Infocenters/WS%20GSS/How-To%20and%20Operations/Services%20Value%20University/Service%20Value%20University%20References/Sybase%20Enablement%20for%20Services/index_new.html

(*) Collaboration workspace
https://cw.sdn.sap.com/cw

…. And now we have JAM, which is supposed to replace the collaboration workspace for new workspaces. So far, I haven’t found anything useful here. So now we have two places for workspaces. Wonderful.
www.jamatsap.com

… but, there is one group there that might hold some promise. I do see some activity at the Mobile Innovation Center Group.
https://www.cubetree.com/c/jamatsap.com/groups/wall/530443