Highlights of Bangalore SAP Teched 2008

The main focus of SAP Teched 2008 at Bangalore was on the following areas:

1. Upcoming Ramp Up of Enhancement Pack 4 for ERP 6.0 and Business Suite 2008
2. Business Objects
3. Enterprise Service Oriented Architecture (Usage of discovery system, Enhancements, Use case, How to find a service etc).
4. Web Dynpro for ABAP
5. Composition application development and enhancement pack 1
6. Business Process Management ( available with Composition application development Framework - EHP 1 )
7. Process Integration 7.1 ( erstwhile XI )

Summary of Key take away

1. SAP Webdynpro for ABAP is the way forward as far as UI framework for SAP Business suite (ERP, PLM, and SRM etc).
2. Enhancements to WEBDYNPRO for ABAP in EHP 1 offers significant improvements to existing framework specifically on rendering where in SAP built AJAX framework is embedded in.
3. Possible to develop ADOBE Flex applications and embed the same with Webdynpro for ABAP using flash islands.
4. Some of the features are being back ported from SAP NW release 7.20 to NW EHP 2. The features being back ported are really impressive. New features will help to increase developer productivity and make overall development process much easier.
5. SAP ABAP, specifically WEBDYNPRO ABAP is way forward for SAP business suite.
6. Business object is going to be the future for Business Intelligence

Product specific Highlights

Changes in BI and Business Objects

• With the introduction of Real-time Data Acquisition (RDA) in BI, now transactional data can be loaded on real time basis. This was not possible in older version. The source system for RDA could be a SAP system or it could be any non-SAP system. SAP is providing most of the Standard Data Sources as real-time enabled.
• BI will under go major change in 2009 -2010 particularly in the reporting area. After integration with BO the BI reporting will be much more user friendly and can able to represent the report in the form of gauges, dials, charts etc using Xcelsius add_on .The query performance can be improved by using BI Accelerator.

New features in Web Dynpro for Java in SAP Netweaver CE 7.1

• Provide next generation Web Page Composer for lean authoring and easy portal page building
• Component Modeler: New graphical tool for creating Web Dynpro Components, Component Interface Definitions, Models and Model Usages
• Data Modeler: Redesigned with enhanced lay outing options
• Context Debugger: Browsing through context structures, On-the-fly changing of attributes values Navigation from a selected context object in debugger to its design-time source in Context editor
• View Designer: Preview in different browsers, Preview in different themes, Select depth of displayed context binding paths, New updated UI elements like Outlook-like Calendar UI Element, Table Enhancements etc.

Changes to ABAP programming language

1. Improving Text Processing With Regular Expressions, Regex Classes.
2. String Expressions**
3. New features of Internal table like dynamic WHERE condition**
4. Secondary Keys for Internal Tables**
5. Improved Editor and Debugger*
6. Chain Statements**
7. SAP has stopped creating SAP Scripts & Smartforms. Most of the Standard SAP forms are getting converted to Adobe forms
8. Focus on objected oriented programming, In future all products launched by SAP would be based on object oriented concepts.
9. BRF Plus ( Business Rules Framework Plus )*

* Netweaver Enhancement Pack 1 ,** Netweaver Enhancement Pack 2.

CTS

With the introduction of CTS+, there will be a single transport management system for both ABAP and Portal objects giving the flexibility of doing the transport from single place.

Enhancement Packages (EHP):

Enhancement packs is way to go forward where in SAP release new functionality periodically. Switch and Enhancement Framework provides flexibility to clients to pick and activate new functionality selectively as per their requirements.

ERP 6.0

SAP announced the start of ramp up for Enhancement Package 4 for ERP 6.0 based on switch and enhancement framework. EHP 4 will enter rampup on 21^st November 2008.

Netweaver 7.0

Ramp up of Netweaver EHP 1.0 for Netweaver 7.0 started on 16^th October 2008. Business Rules framework, Information Life cycle Management and Integration of ADOBE flash island are the major changes.

Composition Environment Netweaver 7.1 and PI 7.1

Ramp up of EHP 1.0 for CE 7.1 and PI 7.1 has already begun. EHP1 for CE introduces BPM (Business Process Management) tool developed by SAP. BPM will enable business process experts to configure the business process with easy and make changes and monitor on continuous basis.

Update on PI (erstwhile XI)

• The XI/PI tool has been upgraded with enhanced capabilities. In PI 7.1 the integration of SAP and non -SAP system/Application has been improved in terms of authentication, by providing a more secure way using standard SAML. There is added functionality of High volume data processing, packaging of the message and idocs which improves the performance. PI 7.1 introduces the concept of ESR and ES in place of message interface. More than 200 readymade reusable services are available for different business function.
• Other new features are Global data type, Db lookup at design time for jdbc, enhanced capability of File adapter, pub- sub feature, integration with Seaburger. SeaBurger Adapter can be used for EDI integration, to integrate SEABurger the inbuilt mapping and interfaces are available.

The Key points that this year's TechEd had focussed on was ESOA, creating better user interfaces for the clients and reduction in overall TCO.