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thus are more resilient to change. Object-oriented methodologies, when fully developed, can also
provide a smooth and seamless transition across the various stages in the SDLC, such as the
requirement definition, detailed specification, detailed design, and code generation stages. This
also implies that such a system can be allowed to evolve over time, rather than being abandoned or
completely redesigned when the first major change in requirements comes along.
Therefore, the basic advantages of the object-oriented paradigm are drastically increased
opportunities for reuse of software components, the development methodology of rapid prototyp-
ing and incremental redesigning, and increased maintainability and environmental portability of
finished applications. I am tempted to refer to the object-oriented approach as the reengineered
version of the traditional software engineering process!
11.1.4.3 Object Orientation and SAP
This completes the introductory framework necessary for us to tackle an object-orientated environ-
ment. Although there is a host of other related complex issues, such as composite objects, multiple
inheritance, polymorphism, concurrency, and persistence, this is sufficient for us to appreciate the
object orientation of the SAP environment as a whole.
SAP is not an object-oriented environment per se,
but SAP's architecture and design are
highly influenced by that approach. The basic framework of SAP, including the ABAP diction-
ary, event-driven programming, and event-driven business process chains, already implements
a host of these concepts and may be reengineered into a full-featured object-oriented environ-
ment in the future. With SAP 3.0 was introduced SAP Workflow that was based completely on
object-oriented architecture of business objects, methods, events, subclasses, and so forth. In
SAP R/3 4.0, ABAP Objects was a full-featured object extension to ABAP that is useful for pro-
viding and programming SAP on the Internet, which is discussed in the later part of this topic.
However, for reaching the full potential of object orientation, SAP basic architecture would
have to be implemented in object-oriented fashion, and all SAP functional modules themselves
would need to be developed, maintained, documented, etc., in such an object-oriented envi-
ronment. This is the underlying agenda of the roadmap to SAP NetWeaver. You can see the
advantages of such an approach during our discussions on SAP NetWeaver in Chapter 10 and
in subsequent chapters.
11.1.5 Web Application Builder
This enables the creation of Web development objects within the ABAP Workbench. Existing
SAP transactions need Web objects in the context of running the Web transactions in the Web
browser. Web Application Builder is fully integrated with the ABAP Workbench. Various Web
development objects like service files, HTML templates, and MIME objects are created in the
SAP repository and integrated with the Transport Organizer.
Web Application Builder addresses functions like
◾
Creating Web-based transactions corresponding to the existing SAP transactions
◾
Creating MiniApps
◾
Generating and editing HTML templates for screens of transactions
◾
Including as additional layout design objects, MIME objects (icons, graphics, animation,
Java Applets, etc.)
◾
Creating language-specific text and MIME objects
