The openSAP course ‘Introduction to Mobile Solution Development for the Enterprise’ just ended this week after 6 weeks of exploring SAP’s vision on the ‘mobile enablement of the enterprise’. Just like the SAP HANA course, the quality of delivered learning content (videos and presentations) was outstanding.
The course tried to discuss & explain the different mobile programming approaches … from ‘pure mobile web sites’, via hybrid web applications (using Cordova/Phonegap) to native developed (Android) applications … and how SAP tools fit into those programming approaches. SAP clearly puts the focus on its new HTML5 client front-end framework SAPUI5, the usage of OData services and the integration of mobile applications with the new SAP Mobile Platform 3.0 (SMP).
The SAP Mobile platform 3.0 looks very promising in terms of offered functionality & maturity. The integration via OData services is straightforward and simple to build. Additional offered services like the logon component take away the burden from the application developers to provide a secure, reliable security concept for their mobile solutions.
Overall the course was a great introduction into the SAP Mobile Platform and its capabilities and I am glad I participated. It is clear that the overall mobile development trend is going towards mobile HTML5 applications — either provisioned via a web server or on the device via a hybrid container like Cordova.
