MBO and OData SDK Differences

The functionality of SAP Mobile Platform 2.x MBO applications differs greatly from SAP Mobile Platform 3.0 OData SDKs.

Note: SAP Mobile Platform 3.0 implements OData version 2, and includes delta token support from version 4.

The OData SDK is primarily responsible for user on-boarding and processing OData requests. Many features that applications require, for example, reading and updating data from back-end systems, are features of the OData standard; SAP Mobile Platform 3.0 implements a version of this standard. OData does not define how integration is done, but defines contracts between clients and servers using Entity Data Models.

MBO primary functions are to define:

Integration into back-end systems
How data is cached and synchronized to devices
Data models for applications

To compare features, we must compare the functional capability of MBOs with the functional capability of SAP Mobile Platform 3.0 and the OData standard itself.

These are the functional mappings between SAP Mobile Platform 2.x MBOs and the SAP Mobile Platform 3.0 OData SDK:

MBO	OData	Description
Defines integration	N/A	Note: OData defines the contract. Integration is performed with other tools, such as Netweaver Gateway or Gateway for Java.
Defines middleware caching	N/A	For performance reasons, SAP Mobile Platform 3.0 does not implement middleware caching.
Defines synchronization with delta calculation using a cache	Uses the delta token approach for delta synchronizations.	Since SAP Mobile Platform 3.0 does not use a middleware cache, enterprise services must implement delta tracking.
Defines data models	Defines entity data models (EDM)
Defines relationships	Defines associations
Defines client-side object relational models via code generation	N/A	Although there are many tools available to generate client-side object relational models for OData EDMs, no such tool is included with the SAP Mobile Platform 3.0 SDK.
Defines a client-side relational database for offline lookup	OData cache requires in-memory lookup.	The SAP Mobile Platform 3.0 SDK does not include any tools that provide a client-side relational database for offline lookup. You can store results from OData queries in a cache, which must be loaded into memory to search.
Offline `Find By` queries	N/A	No direct mapping exists. The document cache provided by the OData SDK does not allow you to query the data using SQL. OData usually represents aggregated data and cannot be treated as normalized data.
Offline custom queries	N/A
Online `Find By` queries	HTTP GET, `$filter`
Multiple MBO sync with sync groups	HTTP GET, `$filter`, `$expand`	Not a direct mapping; `$expand` can only retrieve associated entities.
Create	HTTP POST
Multilevel inserts	HTTP POST with `$batch`
Update	HTTP PUT, PATCH
Delete	HTTP DELETE
Static libraries for user onboarding	HTTP API for creating application connections
Push notifications via dynamic circuit networks and target-change notifications	N/A	Push notifications must be handled manually
On device relational database	N/A	No direct mapping exists. The OData SDK provides a document cache, but you cannot use this to replace a normalized relational database.