Extending your enterprise business processes, data, and information away from the
office is critical to success in today's business environment, however, achievement of a
truly mobile enterprise entails many technical challenges.
SAP® Mobile Platform provides a development and deployment platform that
solves challenges, supports mobile applications to fit your enterprise mobility use case,
and helps to balance device user requirements with enterprise requirements.
Mobility solutions present complexity to the IT organization. These complexities may
include, but are not limited to, lack of integrated solutions, heavy upfront costs
for large-scale customization requirements, and the lack of repeatable development
and deployment models. SAP Mobile Platform addresses these
complexities by providing a platform-based solution that allows you to:
- Leverage existing mobile development tools and expertise to develop mobile
applications
- Develop mobile applications to meet your users' data needs and access data
from a variety of enterprise information systems
- Deploy to a variety of mobile device platforms
- Configure and manage the runtime environment to complement areas of your
existing infrastructure and security.
SAP Mobile Platform supports development and deployment of several
categories of mobile applications to meet the enterprise system access needs of your
business scenario.
Offline Mobile Applications
With
offline mobile applications, information availability is mission critical regardless of
connectivity. These applications remain operational even when they are not connected to
the EIS. Data is synchronized between the Enterprise Information System (EIS) and the
device when connectivity is available. Application requirements typically involve:
- The need to use data on the device if the application is
offline
- More complex task orientation, data input, and screen
navigation
Application developers have two options
- Object API development where developers write custom code — C#, Java, or
Objective-C, depending on the target device platform — to create device
applications and leverage platform specific services. These native
applications leverage SAP Mobile Platform advanced
runtime services for data synchronization management that typically requires
data aggregation and distribution to diverse EIS.
- Agentry application development where developers build applications using a
4GL development interface for business logic, client behavior and
functionality, and other application behaviors, coupled with more
traditional development languages that define the data synchronization with
the EIS.
Hybrid Apps
Hybrid apps offer an
option that is a hybrid of HTML5 and native development approaches. Hybrid apps provide
a feature-rich web based user interface and the simplicity of container-based
deployment. The typical use case for hybrid web container applications includes mobile
workflows and lightweight applications. Human resource management applications for
vacation or travel approval are examples of this occasionally connected application.
Application requirements typically involve:
- Low data volume
- Simple, form-based user experience, involving notifications,
lookup, and action-decision forms
- Light-weight persistence
Hybrid Container applications leverage SAP Mobile Platform services from within a standards based
HTML(5)/JavaScript environment, developers create applications using Hybrid App
Designer or using third party web tools. With this approach, a Hybrid Web Container
is customized for each device type supported in a business mobility environment, and
developers create HTML5 applications that perform advanced, device specific
operations on all the different devices. The Hybrid Web Container embeds a browser
control supplied by the device OS, which allows developers to build applications
with simplicity of Web development but utilize the power of native device
services.
Online Applications
With online
mobile applications, information access is adhoc in nature and access to data is not
available in areas without network access. Application requirements typically involve:
- Request/reply directly with the EIS
- Light-weight editing of form-based information
- Few screens and simple entries
Online applications are developed using the
SAP® OData SDK, REST API, or Agentry Editor.
These applications leverage SAP Mobile Platform
primarily synchronous request/reply pattern for interaction with services. With
OData SDK applications, developers create applications that allow users to work
(create, update data), connecting the application to SAP® NetWeaver Gateway exposed
data.
The types of application development and support with
SAP Mobile Platform help to solve mobility challenges and meet
mobility requirements in the enterprise.