"Why ABAP Performs Better in Portal Development than Java" - Hmmm
I just noticed that Craig Gutjahr has started a weblog at SDN: “Why ABAP Performs Better in Portal Development than Java” - Hmmm. And I saw that many comments have been written. I remember in the companies that I worked, there were sometimes discussions about interesting topics, I think the most of you are familiar with those topics: Windows - Unix, MS SQL Server - Oracle, Delphi - Visual Basic, and so on. According to me there is no debate around SAP development options, but it seems that there are different thoughts. Some people say “ABAP and Java War”, some people say “Why Dual Development Environment”. There are interesting comments:
By William Carlton:
Hi everyone, I'm one of the “RIG” guys and thought I'd weigh in here.
BSP is NOT GOING AWAY. Let me say that again: BSP is NOT GOING AWAY.
ABAP is NOT GOING AWAY. Let me say that again: ABAP is NOT GOING AWAY.
SAP has expended a tremendous amount of research and development to bring the robustness, scalability, and change management features of the ABAP world to the J2EE camp. Web Dynpro technology (both in Java and ABAP) provides a scalable and flexible approach for designing enterprise class applications with its Model/View/Controller design model. At the same time, SAP has also extended the features of the J2EE world into the ABAP side with technologies such as BSP and ABAP objects. Other technologies such as ITS have also been utilized to bring web based access to R/3 applications. SAP has delivered a number of components using BSP technology and many customers have also utilized this technology for their own developments and applications. SAP realizes that many customers are using BSP technology in their own development and SAP WILL CONTINUE TO SUPPORT BSP based development, as Brian says in his earlier post. BSP is NOT GOING AWAY. When making your decisions around Development, it's of course very important to understand and carefully consider the pros and cons of each option, and how they may influence the design or maintenance phases of an application's lifecycle.
Now regarding the article that started this whole furor. I personally think it is not quite fair to compare the EP5.0 Java development environment (now almost 4 years old) with the later BSP technology. It does not serve the SDN community well to provide such a slanted (and in my opinion - biased) viewpoint. A much better comparison could have been made utilizing the latest J2EE 6.40 and Web Dynpro. You could have made a real comparison that would have had much more validity and weight.
Just to reiterate - SAP will continue to support BSP, ITS, etc. for quite some time. You DO NOT have to convert your existing BSPs to Java or Web Dynpro for ABAP (or any other format). However, with the other options now available, it is very important to consider the strengths of Web Dynpro when making your decisions on new development. The upcoming ABAP 7.0 development environment supports Web Dynpro for ABAP so you can have your cake and eat it too!
BTW, Java is not going away either
By Lynton Grice:
I really like the way you think…I'm hoping that in future the Java and ABAP guys will mix and match the two languages as need be to find the best solution to a problem - I'm very happy with that sort of scenario and flexiblity it gives a developer. With the very OO way that ABAP is going, it's just a matter of time before many SAP developers become fully “bi-lingual” in BOTH languages - that sure will have its advantages!!
And yes, SAP has done an EXCELLENT job in bring ABAP and Java under ONE SAP “umbrella”. ABAP / BSP is sure to only get stronger and stronger with its strong OO/Java influence
By Prakash Singh:
I have nothing against ABAP. I used to be a abaper and I have written internet application in ITS(html business language), BSPs , WebDynpro & Portal Components( JSP & Dynpage). I agree with you that ABAP development environment definitely has better version control and navigation (editor). Supposedly DTR for Netweaver Developer Studio is going to come close to giving the java developers version control similar to ABAP world. I was SAP employee until recently and most of the information I got from developers in Germany, Israel & India was that SAP is pushing WebDynpro real heard. BSP are not going to be around in couple of years. In fact they don?t want people to develop stuff in even in HTMLB for JAVA(for Portal application). The idea is to keep the UI separate from business logic. If you have business logic in R/3 or BW then you will use WebDynpro to connect to RFC function module or web services that belong to RFC function module. If your application sits outside SAP world then you will write a EJBs or web services which will then be called by WebDynpro.
Thank you.
By Raphael Vogel:
I think the header line of this article is an inproper generalization. It really depends what you want to develop. (in my 4 years of portal development, I have never touched one line of ABAP code. The things I had to develop could just not be done in ABAP !). Therefore you can't say that ABAP is better for Portal development in general.
The technology which is described there is pretty much outdated (EP5 and JCo Client Service, which is even deprecated in EP6 !).
The state of the art technology for writing business applications for EP (in Java) is Web Dynpro (adaptive RFC). So the comarison should be based onn that technology !
By Craig Cmehil:
Now I've just started ready this article and OK, I don't agree with the time difference in creating first the Java then the BSP, a lot has changed over the two years between the two.
In terms of SAP, the Java framework is realtively new. ABAP has been around awhile now. But taken out of context I can see where one could misunderstand that.
What they stated and found with the Java in EP 5.0 is all correct, however, a responsible person would have performed the testing of the two applications within a short time period of the other and both using realtively new frameworks from both sides.
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All in all I would say the paper is good and it makes you start thinking, I personally would use their examples and do something similar myself to give my developers the chance to decide which way is better for them, because in the end it's not what language you use it's how well you use it and as Thomas mentioned your “But like so many SAP shops, our developer's skill set pool isn't really deep enough to support two major development platforms. I know that I already have to have ABAP skills to support custom development in the R/3 backend. Therefore in the end just about any technical argument in the ABAP v. Java war really doesn't mater because they are close enough in the SAP environment that you can make the decision based upon what skill sets you have available”.
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By Dirk Herzog from SAP:
First of all, yes I'm from SAP and no, I don't have any insight knowledge. But what I've learned from my ten years inside SAP is that SAP doesn't throw technology over board. You can still develop Web RFCs and still create tables without header lines. So what I expect is that they don't do additional development in BSP some time soon in the future but that they support BSPs for quite some more releases. If they don't change their strategy I don't see SAP forcing dozens or hundreds of customers to reimplement their BSP applications.
IF WebDynpro supports all the features that BSPs do and IF there was a mechanical way to migrate BSP to WebDynpro they might let it go but not before.
Well, do you have any comments about this hot topic?