Report from the one-day training on SAP Interactive Forms and Livecycle integration

Yesterday we had a one day training held by Rob Mennen, Solution Architect from SAP about the integration between SAP Interactive Forms and

This is a report of the first part of the day where Rob introduced the deal of SAP and Adobe and the gave us an introduction on Interactive Forms and Flex integration.

Integration and Optimization of Forms-Based Processes
The agenda:

The SAP - Alliance
SAP Interactive Forms by Adobe
SAP Interactive Forms Solution
Technology Basics

SAP is trying to focus on User productivity and Usability. Nothing new : separate the business logic from the graphic user interface.

What is the Netwaever Business Client ?

In principle, the NetWeaver Business Client (NWBC) is a rich client that can access all of SAP's business applications. It runs not only new Web Dynpro or Visual Composer applications but also classical Dynpros, BSP pages, analytic dashboards, iViews, portal pages, etc. The data exchange between NWBC and the NetWeaver server is based on standards and open services. Today the client is based on Microsoft technology.

Adobe is good upon UIs. SAP is good on the backend side. So they made a great deals.

Original strategic partnership contract signed in 2002. Initial focus on integration of Adobe forms technology into SAP NetWeaver:
    - provide industry leading and easy to use form printing capabilities
    - accessibility
    - extend SAP business processes to occasional and offline users with interactive PDF forms

Launched Interactive Forms by Adobe beginning 2005. Software shippinh to SAP signed in March 2005:
    - generation of Adobe Flex and Flash with SAP Visual Composer (it is a tool for analysts)
    - integration of Adobe Flex in SAP NetWeaver that create compelling Analytical Applications (Flex Based applications)
    - various Flex applications to be shipped in future releases of NetWeaver

Adobe Connect to be embedded in SAP - LMS product line (EMEA launch Q1 2008).
Rob showed an AIR demo created by SAP that was a mash up application (integrated with Yahoo Maps) that drilled into  detailed information.

What is SAP Interactive Forms ? They are the result of a 3 years long development and they provide :

Security : support for docuent security, authentication and digital signatures
Archiving : PDF is a well known and accepted format for archiving. PDF/A recently became an ISO standard
Accessibility: PDF IF meet the need for visual impaired people
Workflow: processes can be initiated on  basis of the content (document data)
Direct backend integration : through schema-binding data can be processed directly  without  additional processing on the server side.

SAP does not provide the entire set of tools of Livecycle family.

Interactive Forms in SAP NetWeaver
- integrate interactive PDF documents into business processes driven by SAP applications
- allows forms based input combined with workflow to start automated follow up steps
- generate forms that contain data extracted from SAP systems
- use dynamic or static forms
- complete forms online or offline
- submit data from the form back to SAP system
- complete forms online or offline
- allow user to print forms

The R/3 system was created 10 years ago. SAP is now migrating to NetWeaver.

ABAP is a proprietary language developed by SAP.
Adobe is Java oriented.

Comments

[burberry outlet]

Very good article. Congrats to everyone who are involved with this project.It's great to hear from you and see what you've been up to. In your blog I feel your enthusiasm for life. thank you.

[Supra Shoes]

Web application developers can now reuse existing open source C and C++ client or server-side code on the Flash Platform.