Review of lab activities
This class began with a review of the lab activities undertaken so far. Tony de Thomasis also re-visited the concept of virtualization for the class - in summary participants understood that VMware can provide a complete virtualized set of hardware to a guest operating system and virtualizes the hardware for a video adapter, network adapter and hard disk adapters.
Guest presenter - Ravi Shankar - SAP NetWeaver Portal
Our guest presenter for the evening was SAP Portal Solution Lead from Acclimation, Ravi Shankar. Ravi’s topic for presentation was SAP NetWeaver Portal. Ravi intended to define Portal’s place and function within NetWeaver and the components that they consist of.
Ravi was enthusiastic and actively encouraged participation and input from the class throughout. This approach meant that knowledge from a range of participants was shared. We all gained the understanding of SAP NetWeaver Portal as the web User Interface for the newest generation of SAP enterprise applications that provides an intuitive web-based access to critical applications. As a unified interface to these applications, the portal helps each user to quickly access the right resources and maximizes user productivity.
To demonstrate a developer’s perspective, Ravi led the presentation deeper. We were guided through an analysis of portal examples. These assisted in defining the visual content. Elements defined were: IView’s and collections of these within Pages and Worksets (refer to image above from presentation by Ravi Shakar). The examples analyzed clearly demonstrated the degree to which portals may vary, and the extensive work involved in modification and customization from a standard format.
The knowledge shared by Ravi and the active participation he encouraged helped ensure that participants gained a basic understanding of SAP NetWeaver Portal. Presentation materials were also made available to the group, providing a valuable point of reference.
Administration – Periodic tasks
The numerous periodic tasks we had previously been introduced to were now explored in greater detail via the System Administration Assistant (SSAA). These included: System Log, Work processes, Updates, Batch and Background jobs, DBA logs and user administration. All students with a system set up already complete, were encouraged to select some common administration transactions of interest for future reference, so that Tony de Thomasis could provide some detailed demonstrations of these in future workshops.
