What is native for EP and what is needed to develop and how...

Question

Hi guys!
I have to prepare a presentation of possibilities of the SAP's EP 6.0. I need to know, what is "native" - just plug n' play and how to develop other things... Can you help me please? Any links, documents .... are welcome!
Another question: If I have an independent web application...  - how is it possible to develop it wthin the portal?
Thanx 4 answer... Points are guaranteed!
Peter

Answer 1

Hi Peter,
There is a wealth of information you can pull from SAP sites by looking at presentations and product info.  If you need a short cut, I have a simple presentation I put together with some talking points about the SAP Portal.  eMail me at [email protected] to get it.
In a nut shell, the "native" things you can get from the SAP Portal is quick and easy access to SAP systems.  For example, you can create and display a page to users with a SAP R/3 transaction, an ITS screen, or a BW report in just a few minutes.  With some simple configuration work, users will not have to login to the separate systems.  One of the key advantages of the portal is that it creates an environment for administrators to create/modify views to information using configuration (templates) instead of having to do any coding.
SAP Portal out-of-the-box also has some support for connecting to web services (SAP and non-SAP) and for displaying content from external/internal sites using an IFrame.
If you are not familiar with Portals, I would read some of the product information on the SAP Portal.  There you will learn more about the use of Roles to secure and display information, delegated administration of content, end user features, etc.
Another key concept is the use of Business Packages provided by SAP and other vendors.  Business Packages are pre-built content that you import into the portal.  These packages do require some configuration, however, they are really meant to be "plug and play."  Depending on your companies license agreements, a lot of these packages may be free.  Examples, include Employee Self Service and Manager Self Service business packages that interface with the HR Module in R/3 and BW.  You can get to a listing of the packages here: https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/developerareas/contentportfolio   If you look at some of them, you will see documents and screen shot examples.
If you are not using out-of-the-box functionality then you will create your own templates and applications.  Custom development is done based on JAVA or ABAP development stacks or by using visual toolsets.   JAVA development is done using SAP Netweaver Developer Studio which is based on the Eclipse IDE.  There are two main styles of JAVA development: JSPDynPage model or WebDynpro model.  The first is pure JAVA, the second is designed to speed up development with some JAVA and some Configuration/Visual development.  ABAP development can be done using SE80 and writing a BSP or I beleive you can run a JAVA and ABAP stack for your portal.  .NET development of iViews can be done using the SAP Netweaver Developer Studio for .NET.  Visual development can be accomplished using Visual Composer (I would stay away from this until 2.0 comes out).
My company has been successful deploying Business Packages, configuring SSO to systems, custom iView creation to R/3, BW, and ITS, custom JAVA development, BSP development. 
We have also experimented with deploying our own web applications on the WAS and may move all JAVA development onto the WAS for hosting. 
To take an exisiting web app and truly make it a portal app you would have to rewrite quite a bit of the front end.  You could almost completely separate out the back end of the app from the front end.  You would have to rewrite the front end of the app and possibly redesign the app to take advantage of portal functionality (eventing, centally managed styles, etc).
Another option besides a full rewrite of the app is just to create a url iView (basically an IFrame) to your existing application.  This way it is in portal and then you can take advantage of Roles and security.  With this option though, the portal doesn't control the display of the app (if your buttons and color are different they will remain different).  This is nice for working with a vendor app.
Yet another option would be to integrate the app enough to take advantage of portal events.  To do this you would write a quick custom Portal application to accepts events and call your app with parameters.  With this option though the portal doesn't control the display of the app.
Sorry for the book, but you asked a few open ended questions, which, there probably are books out there to cover.  I know I only touched on a few of the capabilities.