WDA & ABAP Objects - Percent of WF'ers using them?

[Sample, Rick]

Hi Mikko,

I have no WDA experience - yet. Will be pushing for training soon. 
Simple question and please forgive my ignorance. 
I am assuming WDA will be better choice for Portal and smart devices? 

There are business folks asking when we will support iPhone, BB, and iPads, etc. 
for simple Approve / Reject type WFs. 

Thank you for your time,
Rick





> -----Original Message-----
> From: sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu [mailto:sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu] On Behalf
> Of Mikko Mäki-Rahkola
> Sent: Friday, February 25, 2011 1:24 AM
> To: SAP Workflow Users' Group
> Subject: RE: WDA & ABAP Objects - Percent of WF'ers using them?
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> interesting to hear other workflowers' experiences on ABAP OO and WDA usage! I
> hope you (especially Sue, Mike and Ramki) however don't mind me as a late joiner
> combining the two topics of ABAP OO for WF and WDA for WF when sharing my
> experiences, since I've been accustomed to using both of them simultaneously and
> I strongly believe that 1 + 1 =
> 3 in this case :)
> 
> ABAP OO for WF experiences:
> We've now been using ABAP OO for WF in ~10-15 projects since 2007 and I can
> pretty much agree on the use cases and comments already stated.
> Our rule of thumb is similar to others', we are using ABAP OO for WF in cases
> where new functionality is required. Such cases have included e.g. request objects
> in need of object specific functionality (like material requests, where the usage of
> ISR notification objects is not sufficient), but also completely new objects which
> SAP doesn't support at all in BOR (e.g. SAP HCM Enterprise Compensation
> Management). Cases where not to go with ABAP OO and resort to existing BOR
> objects have included e.g. event handling, simple workflows (like IDoc handling)
> where the standard objects are sufficient and customer driven cases where the
> usage of BOR objects have been a must.
> 
> In general, we are using BOR objects nowadays only where it's necessary like
> event handling or where the ABAP OO replacing/complementing functionality would
> require too big an effort when compared to a standard BOR object. The main
> benefits we have perceived of going ABAP OO instead of BOR come from a
> developer perspective. People using ABAP OO in other development (see my
> comments below) are quickly accustomed to using the WF class interface, the
> class editor is familiar to them and there is no need for a separate editor, there are
> less restrictions (anyone had a requirement for more than one
> delegation/subclass?) and in general there's a single development environment
> which can be utilised for other development as well.
> 
> WDA for WF experiences:
> WDA has been around in our projects since 2007-2008 after customers started
> upgrading their systems to SAP ERP 6.0 (gladly no more WDJ since then!) and
> most of the WDA solutions we've done have been integrated to WF in one way or
> the other. Some have just started off a workflow either through a custom or a
> standard event, some have been been developed for work item processing (=
> approval views) and some have been done for work item reporting. Since both
> WDA and WF work on the ABAP runtime, they work beautifully together. Firing
> events with ABAP OO for WF, processing work items and reporting on them are as
> straightforward with WDA as with plain ABAP.
> 
> Currently our nr 1 choice for a new customer specific web user interface sitting on
> top of any SAP Business Suite (ok CRM and SRM may be different) is WDA as per
> SAP's Best Built Application guidelines.
> As Mike P stated before, it has lots of benefits when compared to the other
> alternatives (WDJ, BSP, VC) available. So our outlook on it is very positive, it works
> well together with WF implementations and also has UI-wise very powerful features
> like POWL and FPM delivered with the framework.
> 
> WDA + ABAP OO for WF experiences:
> Yes, the 1 + 1 = 3 section :)
> 
> Having gone through multiple projects using the two, the main benefits arising from
> the usage of ABAP OO together with Workflow and WDA are reuse and
> encapsulation in my experience. What this basically means is that when building a
> web enabled workflow solution having WDA as the UI, we are first structuring the
> solution into architecturally different layers. Most common layers in a typical
> scenario include the UI layer (incl WDA), process integration layer (WF) and the
> business logic layer (ABAP OO). Each of the scenario specific layers then have
> several components like multiple WDA components, multiple workflow definitions
> and multiple classes.
> 
> As an example, let's take a typical parked invoice approval scenario where you
> need to have a web UI for casual invoice approvers, a workflow to coordinate the
> process and a class to take care of invoice actions and information provisioning.
> For the invoice object realized as an ABAP OO class, the typical implementation
> should then include not only WF interface methods, but also getters and setters
> (called as functional methods from WF, and by WDA as instance methods), invoice
> action methods (status changes triggered by WF and/or WDA) and static methods
> used for invoice work item reporting etc. Having implemented everything in one
> class, you can use e.g. the same object and its methods efficiently and effectively
> by both the WDA and by the WF definitions.
> 
> My experience in summary currently is that I would go no other way than using
> ABAP OO in WF related projects. Switching back to BOR not only would make my
> life miserable because of all the macros, outdated editors and other features of
> BOR, but more importantly because its integration to WDA would be so much more
> difficult when compared to ABAP classes. There is of course the learning curve you
> need to conquer as discussed in previous posts, but I definitely think it's worth the
> leap.
> 
> Kind regards,
> Mikko
> 
> Mikko Mäki-Rahkola
> Managing Director
> Nobultec Ltd
> Tekniikantie 12
> 02150 Espoo
> Finland
> +358 50 558 7834
> mikko.maki-rahkola at nobultec.com
> www.nobultec.com - Work redistributed
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> 
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