SAPUI5 versus Visual Studio

[a_heut]

Just out of curiosity: why would developers install the SAP UI5 plugin in Visual Studio? In our company we have both NWDS and Visual Studio available and Visual Studio also has features to create mobile apps. What could be the added value of a SAP UI5 plugin in Visual Studio? I am just curious what the pro's and con's are of using the plug-in in the one or the other dev environment. Could developers in VS and NWDS e.g. work on and the same mobile app? We have developers in both area's and we are wondering what direction to go into? NWDS using SAPUI5 plugin or VS using SPAUI5 plugin or not using SAPUI5 at all but develop mobile apps using VS? Both dev kits have loads of features, programming language c# versus ABAP. We have developers in both areas. Looking forward to your input!

[qmacro · Accepted solution]

I was curious about the title of this question, as the comparison doesn't make sense exactly (comparing a framework to an IDE).

If you're talking about SAPUI5 plugins for Visual Studio particularly, then of course it's partly down to preferences on development toolchains. It might be more worthwhile comparing SAPUI5 plugins for Visual Studio with SAPUI5 plugins for Eclipse. Or even developing SAPUI5 without any plugins, like I sometimes do, with Sublime Text 2 (or even vim).

If you're talking about using the SAPUI5 runtime framework for mobile apps vs, say, non-SAPUI5 technologies for the same mobile apps, then that also makes sense as a comparison. In this case, at least for me, I'd direct you to a post by where SAPUI5 is stated as "the standard User Interface Control library in all their future applications that need a “consumer grade” User Experience". For an SAP developer this is a compelling argument (but not the only one).

dj

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

As DJ Adams mentioned you can't compare an IDE "versus" a HTML5 web Framework.

To help understanding it.. just think about web development. You can choose the visual studio, eclipse, dreamweaver, aptana standalone to develop your projects with - but the frameworks you use for web development could be the same, developed with a different IDE.

It depends on personal experience and the features you wan't to have. For example, if you are working with the google maps api and you want full code assist and documentation, there is a vsdoc for visual studio, so you get full support of. In aptana you won't get this documentation work (at least I can't). Individuell aspects let developer choose different IDEs.

I'm not sure if there is a way to get full documentation for SAP UI 5 with the visual studio, I know you can add the ressources folder to get code assist, but the eclipse plugin gives you documentation and if you create views you get some code snippets etc. Actually the 'full support' is based on eclipse, I personally would prefer visual studio, but that's the actual state. If you got a lot of experience you could also develop with a simple Text Editor - your choice got no restrictions.

At the beginning I would prefer eclipse.

--

SAP UI 5 itself is a framework - if you got experience in mobile web development, compare it with a collection of java script frameworks like jQuery, Angular.js.. etc..

Hope I could help.

- Andreas

[michael_hobbins]

Hello Angelique: I'm curious about you path you've decided to walk. My team works with VS and for very specific events used Eclipse, and we are studying if SAPUI5 might be better than just mobile web + webservices to get info from the ERP. Have you gone VS + SAPUI5 plugin?

Cheers,

Michael