B2B Web Channel on NW7.4: Java 1.4 or 1.6

[Former Member]

Hi,

According to the blog

https://blog.boris-wach.de/permalink/141

when we create the project in NWDS for development of the Web Channel we should set the Java Version to Java 1.4.

We are running NW7.4 as our server, which is Java 1.6, I believe.

We are using the latest E-Commerce SCA's, which are NW7.3; but isn't NW7.3 also Java 1.4?

Did SAP not update the E-Commerce app to Java 1.6?

Should we really set the Java version to 1.4 in NWDS when we create the B2B project?

I've been playing with this in a sandbox for the last couple of weeks and there I set the Java version to 1.6 and haven't had any problems; but later this week I'll be moving to our real Dev system and setting things up, so I want to make sure that I don't make any mistakes.

Any help is greatly appreciated,

P.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Patrick O'Niell wrote:

We are running NW7.4 as our server, which is Java 1.6, I believe.
We are using the latest E-Commerce SCA's, which are NW7.3; but isn't NW7.3 also Java 1.4?

Please don´t even think about 1.4  As it looks like you are completely lost in the various documentations you find for specific applications

Here are the facts :

• NetWeaver 7.0x is always 1.4 Java
• NetWeaver 7.3x and 7.4x is always 1.6 Java - what runs on 7.3 does also run on 7.4, but 7.3 / 7.4 apps do not run on 7.0 (!!)
• WCEM does require 7.3x NetWeaver or higher. It was never developed for 7.0x especially as the technologies used lile JSF are not available on 7.0x independent of the Java version itself
• SAP ISA is available for 7.0x NetWeaver AND for 7.3x/7.4x Java environments - BUT careful, you have to download different SCA files - it is phyiscally not 100% same code as the code was migrated from 7.0x to 7.3x and higher.
• SAP NWDI can be e.g. 7.3+, but can handle projects (development tracks) for also 7.0x environments (but you have to setup multiple JVMs on the same machine => 1.4 & 1.6)

Because 7.0x enviornments run out of support and Java 1.4 is anyway no more supported by Oracle, you would always go for 7.3x or higher as runtime environment.

The only reason why you wanne stay with 1.4 is because your current clients application is still running on. You need to perform a small migration project to upgrade such application to the NetWeaver 7.3x codebase. This is not so complicated, but you might need some experience doing that - i just recently did that in a few days.

[former_member193379 · Accepted solution]

Hi Andreas,

That's totally correct but my only concern is that there is no such guide line from SAP to use 1.6 for WCEM client.

I know if we go to higher version then it always support depreciated methods/libraries as well but sometime it becomes very difficult to convince customer.

If you get a chance where you have o raise an OSS Message then again SAP asks what was recommended.

By keeping above queries in mind I think Patrick needs a SAP written document otherwise as a technical person there is no second thought to use 1.6 as NW 7.4 is itself using 1.6.

Thanks,

Hamendra

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks, 1.6 it'll be then.

Having spent a bit more time with the code I can see that some classes were compiled using 1.5, so 1.4 should definitely be a no go.

Is WCEM just a new name for ISA or is it a completely separate technology?

I'm working with the ISA B2B Java app, That's what we had with CRM5.0 and we're now starting from the last released SP of that and integrating the changes that we made over the years (only now with a CRM7EhP3 backend in place of our old CRM5.0 backend).

Thanks again,

Patrick.

[former_member193379 · Accepted solution]

Hi Patrick,

Is WCEM just a new name for ISA or is it a completely separate technology?

It is not only the name change, framework change as well. Both are on different framework. WCEM is on JSF 2.0 and ISA is Struts based.

Thanks,

Hamendra

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks for that Hamendra, so we're using the ISA struts based application, not WCEM.

I wasn't sure at all if that was just a name change or if it was a completely different thing; now I see, completely different thing.

Thanks,

Patrick.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Nothing has changed, that statement would be wrong

SAP Web-Channel (WEC) does have various products like

1. Web-Channel Experience Management (WCEM)
2. Internet Sales Application (ISA)
3. [Hybris]

WCEM has not replaced ISA, it was always running in parallel to ISA and is a complete re-development of everything.

Since SAP introduced WCEM, the ISA application was also tried to be re-named to SAP Web-Channel Enablement (WCE) ... which makes everything a bit more confusing, because people outside and within SAP often mix up the names.

WCEM was decommisioned unfortunately after Hybris was bought - the customers who do have a licence can be happy, the ones which do not bought the licence before SAP decided to take it of the price list are unfortunately not so lucky.

WCEM code and know-how is partially re-used to enable the official SAP integration for Hybris, so WCEM kind of continues in our heart it´s life within Hybris. Same as some code of ISA was tried to be re-used in WCEM ones.

If Hybris would not have happened, then ISA would have replaced officially by WCEM as soon as WCEM would have covered all B2B features of ISA. The same way as the SAP Online Store was once replaced by ISA.

As Hybris can run standalone without any backend and also does support any non-SAP backend system as well (not just only SAP), the solution is not officially part of SAP Web-Channel. I however see Hybris as the continuation of SAP WCEM for every customer, who still is using SAP ERP or CRM behind.

End of the story is, there is today only ISA and Hybris left.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thank you very much, Andreas!

We installed ISA here about 7 years ago against CRM5.0 and never updated it until now (modified it heavily and continually; we were still putting new developments in to Prod only days before starting the upgrade); so the whole WEC, WCEM thing passed right by me while my head was down inside the B2B app

That really clears a lot up in my head.

Thank you,

Patrick.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Ok, after you used ISA and you are actually currently based on 7.0x (because 7 years ago there was not 7.3 environment) you have two options

1. You keep you NW 7.0x system running to run your ISA application including all modifications you did
2. You recommend your manager to upgrade your ISA application from 7.0x to 7.3x or higher, because 1.4 Java is no more supported and NW 7.0x is outdated. You should then also consider to upgrade your NWDI to the highest version available today. I recommend 3 development tracks (A, B, C) within your NWDI. Track A for your old ISA application, Track B one to migrate your old version by imprting everything to the corresponding 7.3x+ packages. And the 3rd track B which is used for any developments after the migration was succesful. The tracks are connected A => B => C, so that you push your changes directly to the next system.

The 2nd option is the way to go. Not sure how many files to actually touched, but I would recommend to compare your current version using the same code base, which was originally used to create the track. That would allow you to focus just on those files, which actually contain any custom code.

If you correctly did setup your projects from the very first day, then your custom code is already seprated in a SAP independent SC. That would allow you to almost instantly get everything working.

If you feel uncomfortible, feel free to reach out to me. Setting up everything initially is quite important, but most people don´t know how as it is not described in a installation guide ... but it makes it so dramatically easier.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hamendra,

again, WCEM is only designed for NetWeaver 7.3x and higher hence it implicates that Java 1.6 is used including the corresponding J2EE standard. NetWeaver 7.3x and 7.4x do have the same core, there is no difference except of some additional supported features like a more advanced SSO support.

If you read the WCEM documentation, then you will see all example related to the technologies, which are available sicne NetWeaver 7.3+.

So the question abotu using 1.4 for WCEM is absolute nonsense - you can not go to a higher version, because you can´t let WCEM run at all on a lower version (= 7.0x) - that´s absolutely impossible

But what I beleave is, that you personally mix up WCEM with ISA. Both are e-commerce application, but completely different.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

We still have our old Dev->QA->Prod system based on NW7.0 and CRM5.0 and separately from that we're building a whole new Dev->QA->Prod based on NW7.4 and CRM7EhP3 and that'll be mine for the next couple of months until I've integrated all of our old developments in to the new system. Then we'll go live with that and I'll keep the old setup for a year as reference.

I've had a sandbox to play with for a few weeks now and I see that integrating our old dev's is going fairly smoothly. SAP introduced XSRF tokens, so I'm adding a few lines of code to my JSP's to manage that and mostly things are going OK. They've changed how messages work (headErrMsg.inc.jsp) I'd inserted that to contractread.jsp years ago to display messages on contracts; so I had a bit of work to do to get that working again.

Like I said, it's mostly going well so far.

The bad news... I see they've made massive changes to the catalog/search and how all of that works. We've very heavily modified the catalog search and display and I think that I'm going to have a lot of work to do there.

Thanks Andreas,

Patrick.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

But your search modifications are very likely more within the Java code end less JSP... there are just a handful JSPs related hence not complicated.

We currently do a project, where did this migration and go completely to a frameless design. All that together just takes a few weeks.

I highly recommend (if not yet done) to create your own SC and DCs, to completely seperate all your java code and JSP from the SAP standard. That will speed up everything

[former_member193379]

Hi Patrick,

Please have a look of the below blog (very good blog) as well but it also talks about 1.4 but as per my understanding NW7.4 is on SAP JVM6 and there is no harm to go with 1.6.

Thanks,

Hamendra

[Former Member]

So it's still actually a Java 1.4 application, SAP didn't rewrite or change to update to 1.6?

And, essentially, it won't matter what I mark it as... it's a 1.4 app so I can mark it as 1.4 and it'll run on a 1.6 server or I can mark it as 1.6 and it'll compile anyhoos; is that correct?

Thanks,

Patrick.

[former_member193379]

Hi Patrick,

Don't make it 1.6, I would like to suggest that go with SAP recommendations (server with 1.6 and WCEM with 1.4) only.

Thanks,

Hamendra

[Former Member]

Hi Hamendra, thanks again for your time and help.

I've looked through all six pages of blogs from the link and I haven't seen anything that says to compile the E-Commerce code as Java 1.4 in NWDS when running the Java 1.6 server (NW740).

I will, though, set things up in NWDS to compile against 1.4, having looked through the SAP B2B code on our sandbox I don't see that they've updated the B2B application much at all (compared to what we've been running on CRM5.0), they're still using deprecated packages (e.g. JCo) so I reckon it probably is a strictly Java 1.4 application and it'll probably run fine on the 1.6 server... I'd feel a lot better with some actual up to date documentation from SAP; but we'll see how it goes, eh?

Cheers,

Patrick.