Is it possible to install SAP ECC 6.0 on a local dev box? I need to test integrating with with SAP from another application (through BAPIs) and am having a hard time finding any type of developer edition or even a virtual appliance that I can quickly test with. Any pointers?
Yes, it's possible, but if you want to test against BAPIs the only thing you're left with is either a full-blown installation and customization project - I think we can safely rule that out - or an IDES installation. The reason is that with all of the free test drives I know of, you only get the development environment, but not the ECC core with the business logic - and the BAPIs are part of the ECC core.
Take a look at http://www.consolut.net/en/s/sap-ides-access.html - they seem to offer a free IDES access that might be sufficient for your purposes. If you want to install IDES on your own box, you need to be a SAP Customer or Partner with a valid license - if you are, go to service.sap.com/ides - and remember to buy a Really Big Machine[tm].
The SAP developer editions are available for download from here:
http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/nw-downloads
You probably want to try SAP NetWeaver 7.01 SR1 SP3 ABAP Developer Edition first. It's not exactly a full-blown ECC system, but has all of the core ABAP stuff you'll probably need.
Related
I need to integrate an API created with .NET with SAP FI/CO.
Researching online I found out there used to be something called IDES that would provide access to an SAP server free of charge, just for testing purposes, but that's no longer available.
The Consolut solution seems to have been a viable solution while it was active:
https://www.outsystems.com/forums/discussion/6598/sap-server-test-account/
Anyway, my question is: Is there any way for an independent developer to test an SAP integration without spending money to access that server? Are there any options out there that would allow me to access an SAP instance for testing purposes?
Here you can find the official list of developer trials that you might access without having any kind of relationship with SAP:
https://www.sap.com/developer/trials-downloads.html.
If you have an SAP S-user, you might have access to more stuff from the SAP Marketplace. From my knowledge, IDES was / is only accessible through the SAP Marketplace (or external sources which use the marketplace themselves).
FI/CO runs on Netweaver AS ABAP (or an older alternative, e.g. R/3), so you could download it here: https://tools.eu1.hana.ondemand.com/#abap. But it will not have FI/CO in it. Based on the discussion here https://archive.sap.com/discussions/thread/2039981 I would say that it is not really possible to get FI/CO up and running on your local Netweaver.
This is a general strategy of SAP. They provide the possibility of trying out their technological platforms (HCP, HANA, NW, etc) but they don't really offer access to their business solutions for free.
If you don't find any other way of getting access to a FI/CO system (e.g. from a third party or customer) then maybe the best thing would be to use the local Netweaver and mock the FI/CO specific RFCs that you are using (assuming that you use NCo for the integration). At least this way, you would know that the integration works at a pure technical level (at some point though, you will need a real system).
We are looking at building a GUI application having the following attributes -
* approx 100 screens
* approx 200 users
* interfaces with 8 different legacy applications (protocols tbd but we are assuming web services will be exposed)
* has a separate data store for storing authentication and authorisation info along with few other information.
We are trying to avoid spending any money on procurement of physical servers, application servers etc.So we thought instead of building a web application , we could develop a standalone GUI based application that could be deployed on users' desktops considering that the users are less and the access to this application is confined to our organisation.
We were thinking of Java Swing as one of the options to consider. Is it a good choice? Please advice on the other options that we need to think about. We thought MS products would involving licensing costs to buy the product hence we are looking at developing the application using some free software tools.
Thanks a lot!
Regards,
V
I really like Swing and have written many applications with it, but I'm not sure the argument that you will get a cheaper solution because you have to procure less physical servers is a good reason for it.
There are other ways to use computational capacity on the client side. For example you could use SmartGWT. With a browser based solution you get easy deployment and have no problems with client-server communications (i.e. no proxy hell). It's possible to get all of this solved with a standalone GUI, but it requires experience and time (== money).
I think a standalone GUI is a good idea if you need a "rich" user experience and tight integration with the native environment. Web apps are generally less snappy and not so well integrated. If it's just about editing data on a server, the standalone GUI does not really have any advantages.
I won't rehash what we talked about in the comments. It seems you are focused on java gui solutions. With that said there are alternatives for developing gui applications with free tools. Just to name a couple, you could develop your client with Adobe Flex or Adobe Air, use python, php or ruby and GTK, or develop a windows GUI app using c# if your target os is windows. Similar to Air, Microsoft Silverlight is an option. Java is not the only solution.
Many Java gui apps are written using swing. The major competitor to Swing has long been SWT which is used for eclipse and by IBM. Javafx is a newer/alternative platform Sun/Oracle is behind, you should also look at. To be complete, you should also take a look at qt jambi that lets you develop in java against the Qt framework.
I am getting into ActionScript-ing and SQLLite development.
What are the essential development IDEs and utility tools I should get set up for a smooth development experience?
It would be great if you categorize - as free and paid-for-software.
I am accustomed with the Microsoft "free" experience in terms of - Visual Studio Express edition or SQL Server Express edition.
Are there similar counter parts for this platform?
FlashDevelop - Open source IDE for flash but no visual designer. As far as SQLLite you can actually create and manage the databases all with actionscript but if you want to edit/create them with an IDE there are several open/free solutions, from a quick google search we have:
//SQLLite DB manager/admin tool made in Adobe AIR
http://www.dehats.com/drupal/?q=node/58
//Same idea but open source made with QT so probably C/C++
http://sourceforge.net/projects/sqlitebrowser/
//FlashDevelop
http://www.flashdevelop.org/wikidocs/index.php?title=Main_Page
Flashdevelop is pretty much king when it comes to code hinting/completion, pretty much what you'd expect in features from microsoft VS IDEs. There is also a pretty good user base and thus many tutorials/documentation and project templates.
I too use the DB admin tool formerly from www.dehats.com, which has since been renamed Lita and put on GitHub . However, a significant drawback to Lita is its complete lack of runtime error reporting when executing SQL queries.
Mauricio Piacentini is an excellent programmer, but Flash developers should be aware that his
SQLite Database Browser does not support the non-standard features added to AIR's version of SQLite, such as additional column affinity types.
So, as a complement to Lita I've been using Paul Robertson's Run! app. It doesn't have as many features as Lita, but it supports AIR's version of SQLite and it does report errors in your SQL queries.
Like Ascension, I'm a fan of FlashDevelop.
Simple question, I want to know is Java free (especially for web development). Later on if I've build a large website, will the servers, databases cost me much like in .net for example?
Cheers.
Java is free. Check licences of frameworks you're using, but you shouldn't worry about that since most of them are free.
Servers (physical) will, of course, cost you.
There are free application servers like Glassfish and JBoss.
There are free databases like mySQL and PostgreSQL.
So, you can get away with everything being free except hardware and, possibly, hosting of your web app.
Yes and no - depending on how big your site gets, you may be required to invest more money into better servers/databases.
It's not really something that can just be answered, without looking into the future.
Update, as of 2021
Be sure to read the document prepared by pillars of the Java community, Java is Still Free. This document provides a short overview as well as a longer section with all the gory details.
Understand that Java is a set of specifications, not a product.
Java Language and Virtual Machine Specifications
JEPs and JSRs
Many vendors provide binaries or installers for an implementation of Java. Nowadays, all of those implementations are based largely or entirely on the OpenJDK project. Participants including Oracle, IBM, SAP, Apple, Azul Systems, and more have banded together to pool their best technologies for implementing Java as open-source free-of-cost.
The OpenJDK project provides only source-code. Various vendors build that source code to provide binaries or installers for you and me to conveniently put Java on our computers. Some of their distributions of Java are available free-of-cost, and some are commercial with paid support. Some are general-purpose JVMs, and some are special-purpose. Some are a basic JDK and some have bundled extras.
Here is a diagram I made to help you in choosing a vendor for a Java implementation.
And some considerations to think about when choosing a vendor.
We use Incredibuild here to compile our code in a distributed fashion. I was wondering if there are any open source (or free) alternatives to use on a home network?
Failing that, are there any other simple solutions with good integration with Visual Studio out there?
EDIT: I should say that I am quite happy to get my hands dirty and manually configure everything on each machine should that be required.
I can't look past TeamCity as a CI environment - among other features it allows multiple build agents to be linked together in one build grid.
Oh and it also has excellent integration with VS and SubVersion. And it's free to use, up to a maximum of 20 build configurations and 2 build agents.