Pro/cons for dev. environments for Enterprise Portal components

[Former Member]

Hi

I am looking for some positives and some negatives that should be considered when a client needs to decide on which development environment to use for Portal development. I am aware of three products, Visual Composer, Web Dynpro and NW Developer Studio.

Is there anyone who can briefly try to explain the positives and negatives with each?

Any feedback is greatly appreciated!

Kind Regards,

Thomas Kjelsrud

[detlev_beutner]

Hi Thomas,

first, welcome on SDN!

Then about your question:

The standard IDE for any kind of portal components / applications is the NetWeaver Developer Studio (NWDS). By this, you can develop different things (EJBs etc pp), but also portal specific projects (in the end: PAR files, based on AsbtractPortalComponent, DynPages or JSPDynPages) as well es WebDynpro applications. The latter are able to run standalone (ie not driven by EP, but by WAS J2EE 6.40), but there is also a tight integration into the portal environment.

If this is understood, you know that the question "NWDS or WebDynpro" does not make sense, for WebDynpro is developed through NWDS.

A first overview about this issue so far is https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/servlet/prt/portal/prtroot/com.sap.km.cm.docs/documents/a1-8-4/exploring java programming models with sap netweaver developer studio.pdf

In that PDF, also the relationship of the tool NWDS and the programming model of WebDynpro is given (even if the term "relationship" may be misguiding, it's more that these two things are to be seen in a comparison, for they use different techniques, are meant for different aims etc.)

The VC is a totaly visual tool to build "applications" for EP mainly based on access to R/3 as backend system, for example. So it's focus is on building UIs which access backend information. That for sure is important for backend integration into EP, but the term "application" does not really fit.

For VC see https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/servlet/prt/portal/prtroot/com.sap.km.cm.docs/documents/a1-8-4/developin... code-free business applications using visual composer - beginner.abst and https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/servlet/prt/portal/prtroot/com.sap.km.cm.docs/documents/a1-8-4/visual composer - a model-driven development tool for enterprise portal iviews.pdf as an introduction.

Hope it helps

Detlev

PS: Please consider rewarding points for helpful answers. Thanks in advance!