1. #SapInsideTrackBonn 2010
SAP & Adobe
Sergio Ferrari (www.techedge.it)
Renald Wittwer (www.in-con.de)

2. some SAP & Adobe combined products
are now mature
after sharing real-life experiences
let’s try
to forecast market demands
and to identify best scenarios

3. Agenda
 Combined and competitive products
 Adobe Forms
 IFbA - Adobe Interactive Forms
 Rich Enterprise Applications (REAs) with Adobe Flex

4. Flash Platform

5. Adobe in the Enterprise
Rich Internet Applications (RIA) backend engine
…Adobe is the creator of PDF
The Composite Application builder
The Business Process Management

6. Adobe in SAP
 Adobe Forms Combined Competitive  SAP Adobe Interactive
 Adobe Interactive Forms Forms vs. Adobe LiveCycle
Forms
 Adobe Flash Island for
Web Dynpro  SAP CE vs. Flash Builder +
Adobe LiveCycle
Data Services
 Adobe InDesign for SAP  SAP BPM vs. Adobe
MDM print publishing LiveCycle Process
Management
 Visual Composer runtime  SAP BAM vs. LiveCycle
option (Flex SDK) Business Activity Monitoring
 Visual Composer drawing  SAP Portal vs. Adobe
boar (from Adobe SVG plugin LiveCycle Mosaic (no KM)
to Silverlight)
 Xcelsius runtime (Flex SDK)
 ActionScript Proxy
 ActionScript Proxy Generator vs. Adobe Flash
Generator for Adobe Builder 4.0 Web Service
FlexBuilder (unofficial tool) wizard

7. Agenda
 Combined and competitive products
 Adobe Forms
 IFbA - Adobe Interactive Forms
 Rich Enterprise Applications (REAs) with Adobe Flex

8. SAP Forms timeline
SAPScript SMARTForms (=>4.6) Adobe Forms (Web AS 7.0)

9. SAP Forms strategy
Adobe Forms SMARTForms SAPScript
Allowed exception in case of
The Strategy Adobe Forms limitations re-use of old staff only
(e.g. Single job larger than 500 pages)
From SDN:
The SAP forms strategy is based on SAP Interactive Forms by Adobe (IFbA).
This applies to both print and interactive forms.
In this context, most Business Suite solutions have already been converted to the
IFbA technology (more than 2300 forms), and new standard SAP forms will be
created using IFbA instead of Smart Forms or SAPscript.
SAPscript and Smart Forms shall continue to be supported inline with SAP's
maintenance strategy, thereby ensuring the ability to protect existing customer
investment."
Note 894389 - Rel. Restr.: SAP NW 2004s - Adobe Document Services
Note 1009567 - Functional differences SAP Interactive Forms/Smart Forms

10. Adobe Forms in SAP ECC 6.0 (/nSFW5)
 SAP ECC 6.0 EhP4
Business Function Set
ERP_ALL_PDF_FORMS
 Report
RERP_EHP_SHOW_FO
RM_LIST is a menu to
activate 400+ Forms
(customizing)

11. Adobe Forms – tips
As from SDN blog: SAP Interactive Forms by Adobe - Job Profiles SAP (NetWeaver 7.1 EhP1)
As from help.sap.com:
Bundling Forms when Creating PDFs
 Forms are sent to Adobe Document Services (ADS) for processing. You can optimize
communication with ADS by bundling forms in a single call

12. Adobe Forms – best practices
As from SDN blog: ADS Hub - Central Installation of Adobe Document Services
ADS Service Hub ADS Service Hub
BI XI
ERP
Europe
SRM
Latin America
BI XI
ERP

13. Adobe Forms – best practices
ADS Service Hub
Differently from SAPScript and SMARTforms,
with Adobe Forms communication errors can occur
(e.g. ADS patching, offline backups, upgrades)
The use of Transactional RFC (tRFC) can be very useful in case of
asynchronous scenarios like printing in Update Task or eMail after the
end of a transaction (COMMIT AND WAIT)

14. Agenda
 Combined and competitive products
 Adobe Forms
 IFbA - Adobe Interactive Forms
 Rich Enterprise Applications (REAs) with Adobe Flex

15. Adobe Interactive Forms – scenarios
Online (Adobe Acrobat Island for Web Dynpro) Common
 Suitable for signed or well-known modules challenges:
 Active Components Framework (ACF) -> Zero Client Installation (ZCI) • …licensing
 Pre-requisites? Cross-browser? Speed? Digital Signs? Locale? Patch-Level? • store incoming PDF
SOA (Adobe Acrobat as RIA integrated with SAP via WS) into BDS (ECM)
 Suitable for intranet • (eMail) sender
 Good SOAP support identification/validation
Offline (eMail based Application)
 Suitable for internet (outside the firewall)
 Distribution->Filling->Loading
 SAP as eMail server (mx record) is often not appreciated
 SAP PI eMail adapter solve previous problem polling from an eMail
box (an ABAP IMAPI client would be nice)
 If SAP PI is involved it can also process incoming XML data

16. Adobe Interactive Forms - real-life
 Sales Order collection for multi-brands Field Sales Representative
Winner! Best Order to Cash - Adobe Contest 2009
 More than 100 multi-brand wine agents, visit Hotel/Restaurant/Café to promote products of different
suppliers. Via Adobe Interactive Form they collect orders that are sent via eMail to SAP ERP. The list of
wines is updated each season while discounts and merchandising can be freely used. Each agent is linked
to a set of existing customers that should be constantly increased.
 Vendor Master Data - Self Registration via Public Adobe Interactive Form
 Supplier qualifies itself via a rich offline Adobe Interactive Form with attachments (identity card image)
transmitted via certified eMail and then automatically loaded into SAP SRM.
 Vendor Master Data - User-driven workflow based on Adobe Interactive Form
 Employees, operating for the purchasing and accounting departments fill the related section of the
eFORM that is exchanged via eMail.
 Asset Master Data - User-driven workflow based on Adobe Interactive Form
 workers , at construction sites, ask for new assets filling a user-friendly offline eFORM that is then
automatically loaded into SAP ECC.

17. Agenda
 Combined and competitive products
 Adobe Forms
 IFbA - Adobe Interactive Forms
 Rich Enterprise Applications (REAs) with Adobe Flex

18. Adobe Flash - …before HTML 5
HTML Adobe Flex
Flash Island !
18

19. Adobe Flash - …with HTML 5 and Silverlight
HTML 5 Silverlight
http://www.extjs.com/
http://jquery.com/
Adobe Flash
Flash Island ?
19

20. Flash in SAP ?
Rich Internet Applications - are they really worth the effort Dos
Manas Dua and
Business Card
Don’ts
Company: SAP Labs
Posted on Sep. 16, 2009 12:08 AM in Emerging Technologies,Web Dynpro
Hi All,
With advent of new ( so called cool controls ) like Flash Islands, Silverlight etc developers' headache has also increased.
Keeping in pace with the requirements; SAP also has made some standard controls based on these technologies avaliable for use
to the developer community.
Now even for a simple requirement like displaying data in a bar graph (which can be easily and effectively achieved using Web
Dynpro Business Graphics ) people are using these Islands as they have a jazzy appearance.
But here lies the real problem - Many ( or all ) controls based on these technologies doesn't meet the required Product Standard
Guidelines. One such case is Accessibility Product Standard.
So to achieve both - Impressive Look and Feel and Adherence To Product Standard Guidelines ; Developers now have
to develop two sets of UI's for the same functionality; one using all high end controls and other using basic primitive controls.
This has significantly increased the time involved in development plus it will also lead to more maintenance cost as now more
screens need to be maintained.
I would say that SAP should come up with a set of guidelines suggesting that when to use these new controls. If some functionality
can easily be achieved through normal web dynpro controls then use of these new generation controls is not at all required...
Commets Invited...
Manas Dua is a Developer for SAP Labs India.

21. Points to Consider When Using Islands
 More development and maintenance effort will be needed
* Specific UI programming skills needed for Adobe Flex or Silverlight (for control developers only)
* Debugging complexity increases
 Meeting SAP accessibility and I18N standards is not automatic
*Accessibility …in response to
*Co-implementation of an alternative, e. g. based on Web Dynpro native the previous blog
*Internationalization [Thomas Jung ]
*Provide translated texts on the server side and transport them to the client
 Performance
*Avoid using more than 3 Adobe Flash Islands on the screen
*Avoid data aggregation on client side
*Provide suitable paging of data
 Some standard Web Dynpro features are not provided and must be added
*Value help and field help (can be implemented as usual outside the island, however)
*Configuration and personalization
 Users might realize that two different technologies are at work
*Different styles
*RIAs (Rich Internet Applications) behave differently from SSR (Server Side Rendering) applications
 Two development infrastructures are required
*IDE not integrated into SE80
*SAP versioning and transport mechanisms not before upload of application into MIME Repository

22. Flash Islands vs. WD – added value !
Layout
 grid layout is the basic Web Dynpro UI layout (rows/columns)
 Flex support layout Canvas (X/Y)
 Flex support layers (overlapping objects)

23. Flash Islands vs. WD – added value !
Graphics
 Web Dynpro supports basic graphical models
 Flash Island supports advanced interactive graphical models
 A number of amazing interactive graphical models are available as custom
component (free of charge or with a limited cost)

24. Flash Islands vs. WD – added value !
Xcelsius
 A generated Xcelsius component is a perfect example of useful Flash
Islands

25. Flash Islands vs. WD – added value !
 Bridge to the Adobe Livecycle Data Service APIs
 Bridge to Cloud APIs

26. Flash Islands vs. WD – added value?
Stateful on client
 Flex may use the client RAM and CPU power to:
 locally Scroll and Sort a DataGrid
 locally Search an object of an ArrayCollection
 …and thus, a Flex Shopping Cart with minimum interaction with the
back-end can be very appreciated

27. Flash Islands vs. WD – added value?
Keyboard events
 Web Dynpro supports InputField Suggest Values in 7.02
 Flex listens any keyboard event. Useful for responsive applications that
react on arrow keys, Esc
Mouse events
 not supported by Web Dynpro
 Flex listens any mouse event (even wheel rotation) and can manage a lot of
states like rollOver, rollOut
Animations
 Web Dynpro supports few predefined animations (menu, dropdown)
 Flex support transitions (blur, move, resize,wipe, fade…) even with
easing function (bounce real physical effect)

28. Adobe Flex – tips
Think as a software engineer - Cairngorm is a good MVC framework
Think as a team - Subversion (SVN) works fine
Think multi-layer - UI objects can be layered
Think Parallel - service calls (HTTP) are asynchronous
Think internationally - I18N requires a bit of attention (see demo)
THINK
ABAP