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Flash Builder Plug-in for SAP Netweaver Gateway

From Adobe Labs

Revision as of 18:19, 12 Dec 2011; view current revision
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We are happy to announce our Tech Preview of the new Adobe® Flash® Builder® Plugin for SAP® NetWeaver® Gateway Services (NGS). The plugin enables Flex developers to build web and mobile applications that access SAP data published via REST-based NGS. The plugin works within the existing Flash Builder Data Centric Development (DCD) workflow. Simple wizards allow developers to connect with and browse a Gateway Server’s Service Catalog and then generate ActionScript service wrappers and value objects for selected services.

Table of contents
1 Overview
2 Features Implemented
3 Features Not Implemented
4 Known Issues

Overview

Information on SAP NetWeaver Gateway Services (Gateway) can be found on the SAP Developer Network pages and there is a demo system available for testing and prototyping.

Fundamentally, Gateway offers connectivity to SAP data using any programming language or model without the need for SAP knowledge by leveraging REST services and OData/ATOM protocols. Gateway is a combination of:

  1. Technologies that provide a simple way to expose SAP data as REST services for anyone to access;
  2. Tools that enable you to build and publish Consumption Models (sub-sets of SAP data) which are logical groups of related entities (tables/views) specific to a use case (application);
  3. Hosting services (Gateway Server) that provide access to a service catalog, service descriptions (metadata) and operations; and
  4. Exposed SAP data as Gateway Services that are essentially a set of REST resources (Entity Sets/Collections such as Person, Account,…), accompanying relationships (associations) and operations (CRUD).

Features Implemented

  1. Data-Centric Development (DCD) Support for SAP's extensions to the OpenData Protocol;
  2. SAP NetWeaver Gateway wizard for Flash Builder DCD workflows;
  3. NGS catalog browser;
  4. Service introspection and ActionScript service wrapper generation;
  5. Flash Builder Data Services panel and Design view drag-and-drop integration;
  6. Support for Create, Read, Update and Delete operations;
  7. HTTP Authentication;
  8. Design View drag and drop support for binding data services to: 
	spark.components.Application
	spark.components.Button
	spark.components.ComboBox 
	spark.components.DataGrid
	spark.components.DropDownList
	spark.components.Form
	spark.components.Label
	spark.components.List
	spark.components.RichEditableText
	spark.components.RichText
	spark.components.TextArea
	mx.containers.Form
	mx.controls.AdvancedDataGrid
	mx.controls.Button
	mx.controls.ComboBox
	mx.controls.DataGrid
	mx.controls.HorizontalList
	mx.controls.Label
	mx.controls.List
	mx.controls.Text
	mx.controls.TextArea
	mx.controls.TextInput
	mx.controls.TileList
	mx.controls.Tree
	mx.core.Application
	mx.core.WindowedApplication
	mx.charts.AreaChart
	mx.charts.LineChart
	mx.charts.ColumnChart
	mx.charts.BarChart
	mx.charts.PieChart

Features Not Implemented

  1. Fully tested Mac support (Next Release - End-Nov)
  2. Support for SAML and X.509 authentication

Known Issues

  1. Plugin installation and operation in Flash Builder for Mac. It is recommended not to use plugin for Flash Builder Mac at this time.
  2. "Title", "Author" is moved up from m:properties and doesn't show up in the data for test service: http://gw.esworkplace.sap.com/sap/opu/sdata/iwfnd/RMTSAMPLEFLIGHT/$metadata Expected result: "Title" should be parsed correctly
  3. Intermittently, even though result type is apparently set successfully, the result element type is not successfully parsed.
  4. Key properties not identifiable on Service Details page
  5. Class name conflicts in some situations where multiple services a introspected. Work-around is to use prefix prior to generation to differentiate service classes.
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