I’m currently doing web application development in PHP. Management has told us we’re standardizing on “J2EE” (and yes, I keep reminding them it’s now called “Java EE”). I think the rational behind this mandate is something like “we run our business on SAP. SAP has netweaver. We should use Java so everything is integrated”.
The majority of what I do now, and what management wants us to continue doing is rapid web development. My experience with sap so far (bobj, BW, data services) has not been positive. Insider knowledge is hard to come by. Upgrades are expensive and take forever. Every little change requires involvement from 15 different departments. My gut tells me Netweaver will be overkill for most of our projects.
Is netweaver going to slow us down?
I’d like our custom web development to remain independent of our SAP environment. From what I’ve read, there are plenty of open source Java MVC frameworks. I envision our own test/production servers running open source application servers with our choice of db backend (we have DB2, MYSQL and SQL Server running available in house). Each developer would use local vms as their sandboxdev environment. Interaction with SAP would be done using web services or the SAP java library.
What will we loose by not deploying our web apps on Netweaver?
Above all I want to make sure our team stays nimble, both in speed of development and in keeping up with current technology. PHP has met those needs so far. I don’t want to backtrack 5 technology years just so we can “integrate” with SAP.
Thanks.
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Answer
if management says “we run our business on SAP. SAP has netweaver. We should use JAVA so everything is integrated” and you are going to use java on another application server, where is exactly the integration (which was the reason for switching to java)? if you ask me, you should either go the java/netweaver way or stay with php. both support “integrating” the sap system with web services or rfc calls.
SAP has it’s own UI technologies “Web Dynpro for Java” and “Visual Composer” which are avaiable to you on netweaver. there is also the “Netweaver Development Infrastructure” (a QA and Transport System) which integrates the transport and deployment of changes into the sap system. these are poins you’re gonna loose by not using netweaver.