Business Client WD ABAP Smart Client No longer supported?

[Former Member]

A while back I read about the smart client and how it uses XML to create smarter UI's. This sounded great! However, I just came across SAP NOTE 1157611 which says that this communication protocol is NO LONGER supported. Does anyone know if there is truth to this NOTE?

https://websmp130.sap-ag.de/sap(bD1lbiZjPTAwMQ==)/bc/bsp/spn/sapnotes/index2.htm?numm=1157611

Excerpt from Note:

Reason and Prerequisites

smart client was only limited for eCATT and will not be used anymore in future releases.

It is not supported and not intended for productive usage.

The XBML protocol (prerequisite) from Web Dynpro was only supported in the following versions:

Web Dynpro Java:

From 7.10 Service Pack 05 only in context of SAP Business ByDesign.

Web Dynpro ABAP:

7.01 (7.00 EHP1) and NetWeaver 7.11 (NW 7.10 EHP1)has never left the "trial status".

Thanks!!!

[thomas_jung · Accepted solution]

It is true. Actually the smart client never shipped. It would have been part of NWBC 3.0 but was removed before that release shipped. With the advances in browser capabilities it just wasn't as necessary to have our own dedicated client rendering engine.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the quick response Thomas! A shame... really liked how it was looking.

I thought the same technology though was used in eCatt, desktop widgets, Flash Islands (and business client, but scratch that!). So those technologies will no longer use the XBML and change all together?

[thomas_jung · Accepted solution]

The smartclient data protocol (xBCML) will live on within Islands and other tools but ironically won't be used in its original purpose as part of a dedicated Smart Client.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks Thomas, helpful answers indeed. I did go into an updated EHp5 box and see that the smart client still works on NWBC 3.0 when running WD4A. So my last question would be this; even if the Smart Client rendering in NWBC isn't supported, but the "technology (XBCML)" is, wouldn't that mean that it would inherently continue to work in NWBC or any other smart clients?

Or can you say with 100% certainty that any smart client (Including NWBC or others) will eventually error out due to unsupportability? Tough question, but hope you can shed some light on it. My colleagues seem to believe that it will be indirectly supported moving forward and smart client technology will continue to work (albeit with some potential tweaks from our end).

Thanks!

[thomas_jung · Accepted solution]

> see that the smart client still works on NWBC 3.0 when running WD4A

You must have an old version of NWBC 3.0. We removed the option in the Settings to even allow the SmartClient.

>even if the Smart Client rendering in NWBC isn't supported, but the "technology (XBCML)" is, wouldn't that mean that it would inherently continue to work in NWBC or any other smart clients?

The other use cases of xBCML only use a small subset of the xBCML specification. Keep in mind that xBCML is just an XML representation of the UI. Each UI element would still need to be implemented on the client side in the Smart Client app. We stopped updating and adding UI elements to the Smart Client a long time ago. Therefore even if it renders some UI elements, it wouldn't render any newer UI elements or new element attributes. Even it the Smart Client still worked (which it should be accessible anyway), it would already be quite out of date to the state of Web Dynpro UI elements.

Islands on the other hand really only need the Context to be represented as xBCML. They don't rely upon the UI element section of xBCML.

>Or can you say with 100% certainty that any smart client (Including NWBC or others) will eventually error out due to unsupportability?

Yes. We've already added UI elements in 7.02 which don't exist in the NWBC Smart Client and would result in errors.

>My colleagues seem to believe that it will be indirectly supported moving forward

No it won't. All development work on the Smart Client has stopped. It isn't supported - directly or indirectly.