Two-Minute Apps

Gateway enables to create apps fast and easily, making SAP data available on mobile devices and through Web technologies. ABAP isn’t required and users benefit from intuitive interfaces. SAP.info reveals how it works.

Project Gateway promises to make data available from SAP systems on all possible end devices. Thanks to the transfer technology presented at SAP TechEd 2010, applications can be created in various integrated development environments (IDEs). There’s no need for developers to write code in ABAP, and they’re spared the complexity of SAP back ends.

Applications can be created directly for mobile devices such as iPhones, iPads, or Android phones, or for Web technologies. Third-party providers gain new opportunities to equip both employees and customers with applications. The Gateway architecture uses Representational State Transfer (REST) and open standards such as Atom and the Open Data Protocol (OData), an open standard for exchanging data.

Mobile devices or Web software – anything’s possible

With Gateway, SAP hopes to reach users beyond the SAP environment. However, the aim isn’t to equip them with SAP software, but to enable them to access SAP data using standard technologies that are otherwise rarely used for business applications – a strategic shift compared with middleware such as the SAP NetWeaver technology platform. As well as mobile devices, Web technologies and collaboration software play a role here.

The goal is for developers to generate apps for the mobile platforms iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, or Windows Phone and then fill them with content. The same applies to common Web application frameworks such as Ruby on Rails, PHP, and ASP.NET. The collaboration software Duet Enterprise from Microsoft and SAP already runs using Gateway, and similar concepts exist for IBM’s Alloy and BlackBerry from RIM. A standalone Gateway is slated for the first half of 2011. This will mean that integrated development environments such as Xcode from Apple, Visual Studio from Microsoft, and the Java-based Eclipse will also be supported.

Generally speaking, data can be retrieved from SAP Business Suite and older versions of SAP ERP. SAP CTO Vishal Sikka hinted at Gateway’s potential at SAP TechEd 2010: An iPad app for Microsoft’s SharePoint was generated in two minutes and populated with SAP content.

Next page: Easy to develop, simple to use

Gateway: Hooking all devices up to SAP Business Suite (Screenshot: SAP)