Introduction
On April 10th, SAP announced a partnership with Appcelerator (www.appcelerator.com) that has several goals. The first goal was to deliver tools which make it easier for an Appcelerator Titanium application to access SAP data using NetWeaver Gateway. The second goal is to provide tools that allow an Appcelerator Titanium application to more easily interact with data (whether it be data from SAP or some other data source) and services via the SAP Mobile Platform. The purpose of this post is to update you on the status of the partnerships and let you know what you can do with SAP and Appcelerator Titanium today.
OData connector
The SAP NetWeaver Gateway allows SAP developers to write code that exposes data from their implementation of SAP to mobile devices using an open protocol called OData. OData is essentially an Atom feed that exposes data in XML or JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) format. The protocol supports filtering a feed based on application or user-supplied criteria as well as the common CRUD (create, read, update, delete) operations expected from enterprise data sources.
SAP and Appcelerator are working to deliver on the first goal for the partnership – the creation of an OData connector for Appcelerator Titanium framework. The OData connector integrates into Appcelerator’s Titanium Studio and exposes the appropriate methods and objects that allows Appcelerator Titanium applications to easily consume an OData feed – browsing a list of items, viewing details and even updating or deleting content from the feed (appropriate permissions required, of course).
The connector and sample application code leveraging the connector will be available soon at www.appcelerator.com/sap. The connector will be a commercial offering from Appcelerator and supported through their standard Enterprise Support offerings. To see a demonstration of the connector in action, check out the most recent SAP CodeTalk video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSYu2Np_U_U (updated with a new video link on 08/13/2012).
Appcelerator at SAP TechEd
If you’re looking for some hands-on experience with Titanium and the OData connector, be sure to attend the SAP TechEd conference (www.sapteched.com) in locations around the world this fall. Talk to the Experts and learn the latest and greatest things on enterprise mobility at TechEd. SAP offers more than 40 hours of training and lectures on mobility alone. Additionally you can test drive the latest developments from SAP and our Partners in the Mobility Zone and talk to the mobility experts. There are plans to offer a hand-on lab that will walk you through connecting to SAP NetWeaver Gateway using Titanium.
Future Plans
To fulfill our long term goal of enabling Appcelerator Titanium applications to connect to back-end data sources through SUP, we’re working to enhance the SUP server so it exposes its services (such as authentication, data access, synchronization, SSO and more) in a way that can be easily consumed by a Titanium application. With this in place, a mobile application leverages the native capabilities of Titanium of plus the enterprise connectivity, security and performance of SUP. Best of both worlds!
Conclusion
So now you have an update on what we’re doing with Appcelerator. Once I’ve had some time to play with the connector, I’ll publish an article here highlighting how to use the connector to connect to SAP. When additional services are available through SUP, I’ll post additional articles here showing you how to leverage them for your applications.
