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Former Member
Feb 22, 2006 at 10:35 PM

Your opinion on: BSP or Java Webdynpro or ABAP Webdynpro?

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Could you please give me your opinion on the business scenario we have here:

We are implementing SRM 4.0 with backend R/3 4.6C, WAS 6.4 and Portal 6.0. SRM has its typical shopping cart applications mainly for procurement and the workflow trail displaying the approval. The client wants us to build a few custom forms on the web frontend of SRM (or may be in Portal). The idea is to store these forms and display when needed with the status info just like a shopping cart.

<b>Now the requirements for these forms are as follows:</b>

1. These forms will have multiple fields which need to have the F4 kind of help. (the F4 options will reside in SRM or R/3)

2. The form should have some kind of a ALV grid (autoexpanding feature) which will allow the user to put in multiple line items so that they could submit more items on one form.

3. Users need to be able to attach a spreadsheet to the form which should not be editable once the form is submitted. The attached spreadsheet should be stored. (We are planning on using Archivelink Filenet for this)

4. Upon submission, a workflow will be kicked off as per the defined Org structure for approval of the form.

5. After submission, the user should be able to go and view the approval status of the form and also print the summary of the values that he entered in the form. (may be a smartform could be provided for this)

We looked at different options to accomplish this task:

<b>BSP:</b>

Creating BSP pages and giving access as links to the user on the webfrontend of SRM. Now, if we go the BSP route, we need to develop in SRM as the R/3 4.6 c does not have BSP development capabilities. If we take this approach, I am not sure if all the above requirements (specially like attaching spreadhseets) will be met with BSP pages.

SAP Webdynpro Java:

It seems that the Webdynpro is easier to use because of the graphical tools available. But the only problem if we go this route is that we will have to find a java guy.

SAP Webdynpro ABAP:

We currently have WAS 6.4. As per the documentation, the ABAP Webdynpro development tool is available from NW04s onwards. So, we are still not sure if we could use it. But, we want to push towards upgrading if necessary. Being an old time ABAPer, developing ABAP Webdynpro seems do-able. (i know it may not be that easy).

Last but not the least, DIALOG Program:

Creating a dialog program in R/3 or SRM seems fairly simple. Then, an iview could be created on the portal for this transaction, though at this point I am not sure how a spreadsheet could be attached and stored within a dialog program.

The creation of the workflow may not be that bad after the original form is designed. The graphical display of the approval trail might be difficult, but we might get away with a report for that. For printing the details of the form, I guess I could develop a smartform and put out a button on the screen to print it out in the display view.

Could you please give me your opinion / best approach for accomplishing this task, keeping in mind the complexities of these new dimension products?

Thanks

Sri