May 30, 2008
SAP Widget Foundation is a desktop software that exposes a REST API to SAP systems. After you have installed the widget foundation, it exposes the interface as a localhost url using a local webserver instance. You can configure BAPIs that you want to expose from the widget foundation admin interface, under the hood though it uses SAP Java Connecter (JCo) and SOAP Web Services to communicate with the SAP back-end.
Now that we have a url exposing a REST api, it is fairly easy to use an HTTPService and have Flex/AIR applications talk to SAP. Here is a video that Abesh created a while ago that walks you step by step through how to do this.
Abesh has now also released an AS3 wrapper around the exposed REST API, which makes it even more simpler to use this method of communicating with SAP from AIR applications.
There are of course several other ways of making AIR talk to SAP, the most obvious one is to expose a BAPI as a web service and make Flex/AIR talk to that directly using the WebService component. You could also have a server part to your application and have that communicate with SAP using the various connecters available for various programming platforms.
When I was working with SAP my job was to create prototype applications that showcased how data from SAP could be used in conjunction with various RIA technologies to make life easy for the enterprise users and I found the widget foundation approach of making my applications talk to to SAP very easy and useful, I hope you do too.
February 3, 2008
Thursday, the 31st of January was my last day at SAP, after a lot of thinking I finally decided to step out of the corporate work environment that I’ve been in since I started my career and give consulting a chance. But wait, before you start typing an email to send me your next RIA project, I have already committed the next several months to an RIA for a stealth mode web startup based in Atlanta, Georgia.
The project is extremely exiting and was one of the many triggers that made me take this big step. Currently we are a small team of three where I’m the only developer, the other two guys are the ones who had the idea and understand the business in the idea very well. So from a development standpoint I’ll be doing it all on my own, although we may seek more help if needed down the line. I’ve done many such all on my own projects at SAP so I’m pretty confident that i can pull this off. The scary part is the working from home bit …. while I used to occasionally work from home while at SAP, doing it full time scares me a lot .. hopefully I can deal with it .. If you have some tips please do share.
I would like to thank all my peers a SAP for all the support, encouragement, guidance and learning that they provided me over the past 14 months and wish all of them a very bright future. I had an excellent time working at SAP … I worked on several Flex/AIR/SAP applications that showcased how SAP could be used as a platform for rich experiences and all my projects very well received all across the company, many of them even helped SAP win big sales deals. The people I got to work with are some the best is their respective fields and I learned a lot form all of them and best of all I made some very good friends.
These past 14 months couldn’t have been better and now its time for me to take on some exciting new challenges, so wish me luck. read more
December 1, 2007
What is it?
initRIA is a day long developer conference of Rich Internet Applications enthusiasts organized by the Bangalore Flex User Group. This is the first conference dedicated to Rich Internet Applications in India.
When: Saturday,15th December, 8.30 am onwards Sunday, 16th December, 8.30 am onwards
Where: Honeywell was kind enough to sponsor the event location ..
HoneyWell Technology Solutions (opposite IIM Bangalore)
151/1, Doraisanipalya, Bannerghatta Road,
Bangalore 560076
What topics can be talked about?
The talks can be about any RIA technology … AJAX, Flex, AIR, Silverlight, JavaFx or others. We are hoping to get a good mix of talks on different technologies. The nature of the talks has to technical in nature … this is not a marketing event so no marketing mumbo jumbo please.
read more
November 27, 2007
I’m at the SAP Developer Network Community Day in Bangalore. I will be presenting an introduction to Flex and AIR with Raghu in the afternoon as part of the Rich Internet Applications Birds of a Feather.
Do stop by to say hello if you’re here too. read more
June 13, 2007
My team in SAP India (Demo Solutions Group) has multiple openings for junior Flex developers. A very broad and basic requirement set for these positions is:
- Some experience with Flex or the willingness to learn and explore this exciting platform.
- Experience in developing User Interfaces with other technologies like Java Swing, .Net, AJAX etc.
- Good understanding of Object Oriented Programming
- Experience in developing Enterprise applications
- Preferably, some knowledge of SAP technologies etc.
So, if you are interested in working with me and my team on some very new and innovative Flex projects at one of the best software firms in the world send me an email with your resume at mrinal[dot]wadhwa[at]sap[dot]com. read more
