Web Dynpro for Open Source

[Former Member]

Dear Web Dynpro community,

please have a look to Benny´s blog under raising the question whether Web Dynpro Java should become Open Source.

It would be very interesting for me to here your opinion about this. What are the benefits in doing this? What are the risks? Would YOU like to actively contribute?

Thanks in advance

Jochen (Product Owner Web Dynpro Java)

[Former Member]

Hy, I am having a prolbem which is so disturing and annoying , so if you can please help me....

I am installing netweaver developer studio 7.1, but it i cannot find the web dynpro perspective...i can`t even create a web dynpro project because it isi missing.what can I do? thank you very much

[udaykumar_kanike]

sorry it was basic question so i deleted

Edited by: Uday Kumar Kanike on Feb 19, 2012 10:53 AM

[former_member186148]

Hil all!

I can't understand is it possible to use WDJ 7.2 with Tomcat for developing purposes or no? And if yes how I can use it?

(my thread is here: http://forums.sdn.sap.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1904229&tstart=0 )

[profitlich42]

You can't use a Tomcat to run WDJ applications. You still need a SAP J2EE server.

[rolf_paulsen]

Hi Andreas,

this is not true - see the WDJ demo kit.

Cheers

Rolf

[former_member266078]

Been a java programmer for 10 yrs, been in the SAP landscape for 3 yrs. Open sourcing WD is the only way to savage it.

Here are my list of thought for what its worth.

- I HAVE NEVER WORK ON A JAVA PROJECT THAT I CANNOT SEE THE OBJ/FUNC'S SOURCE CODE I'M CALLING. I sometime decompile the WD jars just to see what's going on. It's just WRONG!

- If developers are working in SAP-only landscape, why choose javaWD instead of abapWD? aWD is more powerful, closer to data, tons of FM to call, and just as pretty. Its got to offer more.

- Someone pretty smart once said: "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." WD is overly complicate for the simple things it's doing. Paradigms change along with technology, MVC is not always the best even in the most complex project. Open sourcing it offer a chance for it to grow organically, maybe slowly go toward to simpler paradigm.

- The entire SAP java stack been stuck in limbo until only recently w/ java5 in the 7.1/7.2. While the world of java is already embracing JEE6. Its simpler, faster and more dynamic and powerful. WD in Java6 will only happen in OSS, because SAP AS have to evolve slowly, it's just a fact of life. But WD doesn't have to.

- I have here a setup for a webapp, Wicketspringibatis+JCo, calling a simple RFC from R/3. Each layer performer their duty, no more, no less. There are no unnecessary complexities anywhere...well except JCo. Beef up each module individually, yet keep them simple is the key. Look at how spring replacing EJB/J2EE1.3.

[former_member266078]

BTW. I just learn from the consultant who went to the conference in FL. ESS will be using abap WD moving forward.

Smart move. I'm not ABAP developer, and would love to stay in java land, but I'm picking up abapWD for sure.

Maybe after all the SAP modules that are using java WD have convert back to abap WD, then maybe we can have a open source WD...!?

[rolf_paulsen]

BTW: In SAP Netweaver 7.20, SAP supports generation of CRUD- JSFs (!!!!!!) for JPA-Entities:

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nwce72/helpdata/en/3f/93694c6c4f405ba2782f25cabec3ab/content.htm

Iit is really JSF; not WD Java, and it is an SAP feature, not included in "normal" Eclipse WTP. Not yet fully stable, but a good point to start from.

The layout is "Web-Dynpro-like".

[Former Member]

I think that it is a wonderful idea! and will happily contribute my time and skills to help develop that idea.

[siarhei_pisarenka3]

Hello

I think that SAP WebDynpro is similar in many things to another known framework for building Web applications - Google GWT. The main difference is that GWT is an open source project with an active community building additional libraries and tools. So I see several main things that are currently missed within WebDynpro and available within GWT:

1. Any Java developer cannot download WebDynpro and build his own web application based on it.

2. WebDynpro runtime cannot be deployed onto any other standard J2EE server excepting SAP Netweaver Java.

3. WebDynpro community cannot develop custom reusable WebDynpro components and share them with other WebDynpro developers.

Personally I'm a WebDynpro fan and hope that these things plus SAP name will bring WebDynpro to the next level.

Regards, Siarhei

[Former Member]

Hello,

I think WebDynpro for Java as open Source makes only sense when i have also an open source application Server to run my WebDynpros on it. Without the possibility to use the WebDynpros for my own i dont have a motivation to spend time in it. To buy a SAP Java Application Server is also not possible for a small company.

When there come also an open source application Server for the webdynpro´s our company will join and give also coding to the community.

Best regards,

Patrick Höfer

mindsquare

we love IT

[Former Member]

An open-sourced Web Dynpro would be build for sure independetly from SAP JEE - as I wrote earlier even today we have WDJ running on TomCat, Google App Engine, Bea, .... to make this complete it is mainly "just work" - the WDJ architecture is prepared for such an platfrom indepedency from the very beginning ...

[Former Member]

Hi,

I've exposed some of my thoughts about it in the weblog post. However, I'll update some based on what I think this is going.

While I personally don't like some aspects of Web Dynpro, I made a choice to work with it. After 8 months playing with it, I'm still not buying it's idea and most of all, the environment it runs. This whole idea of making it Open Source could be a huge step towards something good.

But I might be missing the point.. Correct me guys if I'm wrong.

Based on what I've seen so far, SAP wants to keep both version of WDP (ABAP / Java) at the same implementation level. That means, no huge gaps between them. So, what would happen when " if " the Java Open Source / Community version starts to grow "out of proportion" comparing to its ABAP version?

I don't see WDP being used "outside" SAP implementations. I don't see any advantage over JSF for example, only disadvantages to be honest. Some will say, standardized ui.. Usually, we use an UI StyleGuide for that, it's a way better than forcing a lot of limitations.. - anyway, getting back, what would happen to SAP world after that? - I assume we would have SAP AS shipped with a "SAP supported" version of WDP, which would be a version that they can leverage ABAP version as well.

If I'm totally missing the point, forgive me.. but I still can't see the whole picture.

[Former Member]

Jochen Guertler,

If I understood, you have WDJ running on Tomcat. So, can you list the steps to make it?

Regards, Thiago.

[Former Member]

Hi Thiago,

yes this is right - we have a TomCat version since years and we used this in some areas of our internal development.

I will check if and how we could make this "public available" (at least for evalutation purpose). I hope that I could provide here some more details soon.

Best regards

Jochen

[Former Member]

Hi all,

<p>

let me add some comments on some parts of the answers (also in the two blogs around this topic ..).

In general it is really interesting to see that there seems to be a real interest for an "open sources" Web Dynpro for Java. This is motivating to go into this direction and to further discuss this here within SAP.

<p>

Some technical comments: I agree that an open-source WDJ (in the ideal world) would include also the WDJ tools parts and most probably also UR ( = Unified rendering) as the underlying (HTML) rendering technology. Also NWDI is somehow part of this game. BUT: I do not think that such a big step is realistic and feasible. Instead of this the first natural step for me would be to open-source the WDJ runtime part. This WDJ runtime contains all important parts needed to run WDJ applications (including the control libraries, the different CMI model implementations, the different clients and last but not least the server-abstraction layer).

<p>

This server abstraction layer (SAL) is most probably not know by the WDJ community as this was never rolled out in the past. As the name shows this layer encapsulates the server environment "hosting" the WDJ runtime. This allows us even today to run WDJ applications besides the SAP JEE also in top of a simple TomCat installation. This version is used for a long time for control development but was never rolled out.

<p>

In the labs we have WDJ application running on Amazon Cloud, on Google App Engine, on Bea and also on top of Geronimo.

Not all of these server abstraction implementations are fully working for the moment and not all features are available for all implementations - but it would be really straightforward to provide all these implementations - in the ideal case of course via a active open source community ,-)

<p>

Besides the platform implementations I see some other areas how an open sourced version of WDJ could be extended:

<p>

• The combination of WDJ projects with Maven. This is also on our internal development list but due to prios this was never started.

• New controls. Also without open-sourcing the UR layer I see a lot of potential to extend existing controls or to build completly new controls.

• "Generation-free WDJ" - the idea would be to provide a WDJ version which is not depending on a complex generation framework. This would be of course one option but a "generation-free" WDJ would allow you to code your WDJ apps / components completly without any generation.

• Extending the usage scenarios for "system components" - this kind of WD components is used to extend WDJ runtime capabilities. Currently this is only used for the "Technical Info" and the UI of the implicit personalization but there is a lot of potential to extend this.

<p>

This is only a very short list of things I have currently in mind - for sure you will find more.

<p>

Have fun at TechEd Phoenix

Best regards

Jochen

[Former Member]

Hi all,

i think that is a really good idea.

I've been developing with JAVA and OpenSource for IBM products for the last 4 years and when i came to the SAP world, i've never heard about Web DynPro. Now it seems very powerful specially for the new developers that don't want to dig into details to provide a good solution.

From the developer point of view, i think the concept of WD abstracts from the HTTP standards (Sessions, Requests and so on). That's kind of good and bad at the same time. The major part of developers are used to talk about this terms so it's a little confusing when you program a web application without using the regular http scopes provided, but on the other hand, it saves us some time.

As a web developer, i also miss the possiblity of editing the JSPs and messing a little with javascripts/css, but i think thats the price to pay to develop a easy, encapsulated solution without surprises on the pages.

From SAP point of view, i think that putting WD in Opensource is also good, because it can give the projection to this product that it really deserves. Look what IBM have made. They support apache projects, eclipse and other projects, then they add some pluggins and add-ons to the base and make revenues from this add-ons.

That is really clever, because they can get people developing for free to the base product, giving projection and evolving the product in a fastest way, and giving the costumer more arguments to buy the add-ons.

Look at Oracle who have bought Sun, and plans to enter to the Opensource world too.

SAP the time is now!!!

[matt_steiner]

I justed wanted to say that I like the idea in general. WD4J has matured over the years and is certainly ready for prime-time. We @ Custom Development have built lots of projects using the technologie and I would not want to miss it anymore...

Open-Source sounds like a bright future and this way WD4J may finally get a much bigger acceptance by the global Java community.

The only challenge I see is to setup a working governance to keep a unified codeline. If this would end up in multiple sub-branches mainatined independantly the momentum may get lost...

[Former Member]

Guys,

This should be seen a great milestone in the future!

Positive changes in OWD4J (Open WD for Java) could reflect back to the platform into faster evolution of Portal, CE, BPM and other Java based products.

Companies like Sun/Oracle have advocated about business reasons for Open Source initiatives in the past.

Now is time for our developer community to gather around a common goal and spread WD into the Java world.

"The train has gone but maybe we can catch a fight."

Look forward for what's next.

Cheers,

Marlo Simon.

[Former Member]

Hello All,

In SAP it looks like all products on Webdynpro Java is slowly been replaced either by Webdynpro for ABAP or Other microsoft technologies. Open source might help webdynpro java to be accepted by the community in a long run.

Long Live Webdynpro Java.

Regards,

Ayyapparaj

[Former Member]

wow - interesting feedback and so many positive opinions.

I will make this to a sticky thread as soon as possible and I am keep you updated here of course. Meanwhile I am looking forward to get more feedback regarding this topic,-)

Best regards

Jochen

[Former Member]

@Jochen - could you keep us informed about obstacles which might lie ahead of this endeavour. I can definitely say I am willing to contribute but that largely depends on the result of the going-open-source project. E.g. what parts are open source and under which license.

Edit: someone could sticky this thread

[former_member190457]

Hi all,

WDJ released as open source would be definitely great, but one major issue would get in the way in my opinion.

SAP's component model and its highly organized metadata (SCs, DCs, ...) are not to be found anywhere else in the market or OS projects as far as I know.

Actually, one of the most important achievements of SAP model is that compilation is highly optimized. Only those DCs that are really affected by changes are rebuilt. This would definitely not work in SVN or CVS, since these are just "open source DTRs".

The only choice would be local (i.e. on the developer's machine) compilation.

Not to mention Product lifecycle management features (transport, track connections, ...).

Should SAP release NWDI as well to fully leverage Component Model?

Moreover, Development Tools as well should be released as from-scratch plugin development is not feasible in my opinion.

Eager to know your opinions in this matter

Thanks, regards

Vincenzo

[Former Member]

>

> Actually, one of the most important achievements of SAP model is that compilation is highly optimized. Only those DCs that are really affected by changes are rebuilt. This would definitely not work in SVN or CVS, since these are just "open source DTRs".

in fact DTR (NWDI) is just a closed source CVS and inferior in regards to both usability and performance. Consider it the other way around, i'd like to see webdynpro integrate with all modern versioning systems. Once you run webdynpro outside the sap ecosystem, you don't talk about transports anymore. You dont need a CBS either. I would argue that local builds increase flexibility. A dedicated central build system with 12GB of memory? Thats no real-world scenario, its just that SAP customers got used to it.

[former_member190457]

Transports and central build systems are good practices which might be spread and more universally adopted upon release of the appropriate tools.

Performance and hw requirements might be the area where SAP might get value from releasing the source as

major improvements might be achieved as OS contribution.

However, I think we are getting off track here wrt open WDJ.

@Jochen Just let me say in this regard that I would be glad to contribute.

Specifically it would be great to see how non-SAP frameworks (e.g. Hibernate, Spring, Struts and the likes) would influence and merge with WDJ.

thanks, regards

Vincenzo

[Former Member]

Hi,

>SAP's component model and its highly organized metadata (SCs, DCs, ...) are not to be found anywhere else in the market or OS projects as far as I know.

I don't think it is a requirement to also open-source NWDI at the same time (this would complicate the process)

Maven http://maven.apache.org/what-is-maven.html has become the de-facto standard within the java community for depdencies control. I believe the core functionality of DCs could be mapped quite easily to Maven concepts.

[Former Member]

Hi All,

This is SRIRAM(raja) i am working as SAP EP Consultant.

Now i want to enter into WebdynPro for JAVA Programming ,

I have little bit core java knowledge and programming skills of c and c++,

I want to improve my programming skills and what is the procedure to become a good programmer ?

I think these are necessary to know as become a good programmer

Can you please suggest me ...How can i grow as a good programmer in this SAP EP side?

Finally till now i am just 60% student and also 60% Programmer

Say All The Best To ME.

[Former Member]

Hi,

To start with Web Dynpro Java development I would recommend to read the 2 books "Maximizing Web Dynpro for Java" and also "Inside Web Dynpro for Java" - and: check the tutorials available in SDN regarding this topic. By the way: latest in February we will publish a huge number of new tutorials via SDN describing all new features we have in the SAP NetWeaver releases 7.11 and 7.20.

Best regards

Jochen

[Former Member]

Hi Jochen,

Any news about this topic? - Would be nice to see any update from SAP about it..

Regards,

Daniel

[former_member190457]

Hi Jochen

it's been a long time since the thread was last updated.

Any update on Open Web Dynpro project?

Thanks, regards

Vincenzo

[Former Member]

Thats an interesting question. I for one see webdynpro relatively tied to the portal (portal stylesheets, jco metadata etc) but I'd love to see webdynpro being able to run on other application servers. So you guys would have to figure out how to cut those ties and make a webdynpro application a completely standalone EAR which can be deployed anywhere.

Another point being, webdynpro java would probably get a lot more components, you'd have to pull those into WDA to keep both consistent.

[Former Member]

Hi,

I've just seen first-hand the innovation caused by the open-sourcing of the topic map engine Ontopia my company Bouvet ASA recently did. Some of the experience are documented in the blog http://ontopia.wordpress.com/

Therefore, I am very positive to the open-sourcing of WD for Java if

a) it fills a "niche" and provides something more than the open-source solutions which exist today.

b) it provides value back to SAP

The key features which make WD stand out are

1) Model driven

2) Standardized UI

3) Rendering engine independent

I don't know of any open-source solutions which have the same key features, so requirement a) should be fulfilled.

With regards to value to SAP, I believe that by opening up for WD usage in non-SAP scenarios also, the technology will evolve. The benefit of this evolution can then be brought back to SAP customers through a more powerful user interface for both SAP provided solutions and SAP related custom development. (exactly what this evolution and how much value it will provide needs to be looked closer at)

> I for one see webdynpro relatively tied to the portal (portal stylesheets, jco metadata etc)

I don't see any major issues in separating the WD for Java from its depdencies.

Method of styling should be relatively simple to modify and the JCO metadata could be stored through standard Java EE mechanisms. Also the JCO connector comes in a stand-alone binary version if you need to communicate with SAP backend systems.

Regards

Dagfinn

[former_member182046]

Hi,

Kudos and thanks to Jochen for being so open to this discussion and to Dagfinn for his great comment. I wanted to respond here but the text got longer and longer and mutated into a blog post.

Here's my attempt at contributing to the discussion: [Web Dynpro as OpenSource: Built on NetWeaver, Runs Everywhere|http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/16164]

Best regards,

Thorsten

[Former Member]

It would also strengthen the java position in the SAP world once you get a larger userbase behind it