Question Re: When will SAP Java AS for EE 6 see the light? in Technology Q&A

When will SAP Java AS for EE 6 see the light?

former_member190457 — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 16:22:44 GMT

Hi all,

As far as I know, SAP's bleeding edge AS (NW73 AS) is based on EE5.

As several java AS vendors are releasing EE6 compliant products, I would like to know whether any deadline has been set for SAP's EE6 app server release.

Thanks in advance

regards

Vincenzo

Re: When will SAP Java AS for EE 6 see the light?

Former Member — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 11:45:11 GMT

Hi,

I'm also very interested in knowing the roadmap of SAP on this subject.

Will SAP CE 7.4 be JEE6 compliant?

Re: When will SAP Java AS for EE 6 see the light?

Former Member — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 08:16:08 GMT

refer to PAM (Product Availability Matrix)

Re: When will SAP Java AS for EE 6 see the light?

Former Member — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 16:17:06 GMT

I'm sorry but I can't find any information on this subject in the PAM

For instance, I can't see when CE 7.4 will be delivered.

thanks

Re: When will SAP Java AS for EE 6 see the light?

Former Member — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 19:19:03 GMT

Then it must have not been plan as of now.

As soon as delivery date is planed it will show up in PAM.

Re: When will SAP Java AS for EE 6 see the light?

rolf_paulsen — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 13:35:11 GMT

This question was asked more than 1.5 years ago. In a reply on this thread from 2009, Benny Schaich-Lebek stated that "there are no plans available (...) that would tell us when this standard (Java EE 6) will be part of the product."

This was understandable in a situation when ramp-up of 7.20 started, but now 7.30 is GA for months and there are still no plans? Are there any plans to make plans?

Compare to other great Java EE application servers:

IBM WebSphere: Java EE 6 support released in Juli 2011

Oracle WebLogic full Java EE 6 support was announced for the end of 2011, key APIs are already available since Jan 2011 (JPA 2.0, JSF 2.0 etc).

NetWeaver is late.

Re: When will SAP Java AS for EE 6 see the light?

Former Member — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 13:43:54 GMT

SAP is not late:

Giving the size of the company, it woult take much time to release support for Java EE 6 , if it intended to.

I think SAP does not want to put its eggs in the JAVA Basket.

Re: When will SAP Java AS for EE 6 see the light?

rolf_paulsen — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 14:01:24 GMT

No, SAP could not be later with their communication about the Java EE 6 timeline.

IMHO Oracle and IBM have a significant size, too And as companies of this size they did not deliver Java EE 6 support in a few months, but it was a process with steps like JPA 2.0 and - most important - communication with their customers showing that they are working on it and that they have an interest to let users take advantage from the new, more lightweight EE 6 standard. Compare this to SAP.

You write: "t woult take much time to release support for Java EE 6 , if it intended to". Conclusion: They obviously do not intend it, they put only the minimum in the "Java basket". The improvement of the Java EE 6 standard is not even worth a timeline that is communicated to their customers. Compare this to Java EE 5: SAP NetWeaver was one of the first Java Application Servers that supported Java EE 5.

Re: When will SAP Java AS for EE 6 see the light?

Former Member — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 07:34:36 GMT

We are developing our web-applications on Tomcat 7 JDK1.6 based on JSF 1.2 / 2, Trinidad, CODI (CDI).

We spent a lot of time in migrating this web-applications to run on Netweaver in our production environment.

For over one year we are now waiting to get an information if / when SAP will support EE 6.

Our web-applications are constantly being devolped and are now are using JSF 2, JPA 2 (EE 6), RichFaces, IceFaces, Vaadin, ....

Our efforts to try to use JSF 2 (MyFaces / Trinidad) on NetWeaver failed because there is neither a support / interest from SAP nor big experiences with the NetWeaver in the MyFaces-User-Group.

So, the most of our new developed or updated web-applicationen have abandoned the NetWeaver production environment.

I am really disappointed. Looking back, the earlier investigations in the migration to NetWeaver were not worthwhile.

And I am really not sure, if there are plausible reasons for moving these web-applications back to NetWeaver in the future when there maybe is a EE 6 support.

My appeal to SAP:

Please provide informations about the future plans of the NetWeaver development and support your customers, if they want to use or integrate modern / popular technics (like JPA 2, Resfulf Services, JSF 2, CDI,... ) on NetWaever.

Re: When will SAP Java AS for EE 6 see the light?

Benny — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 10:11:38 GMT

Hello Steffen,

the new OnDemand Cloud Platform, currently called NetWeaver Neo which is in beta now and planned to be released in the second half of 2012 does support Java EE 6 Web Profile and further implementation of the standard is planned.

It is also planned to bring the features of Neo to the on premise environment afterwards. When this will happen I cannot answer.

During the last two years our Java development has concentrated on the delivery of an on demand cloud based environment.

Regards,

Benny

Re: When will SAP Java AS for EE 6 see the light?

rolf_paulsen — Fri, 11 May 2012 19:50:58 GMT

Hello Steffen,

thanks for your post! At least we are not alone!

@Benny Schaich-Lebek: Hello!

Java EE 6 Web Profile only? This is not much. The remainding Java EE is not yet begun(?), only planned with no preliminary schedule for the "on premise" environment. Very disappointing.

Let me cite your post in http://scn.sap.com/message/8528073#8528073 and compare it to your current statement:

Dec 14, 2009:

"With the availability of Java EE6 it now is time to introduce it to our development, but there are no plans available (one week after release of the standard) that would tell us when this standard will be part of the product."

Apr 4, 2012:

"It is also planned to bring the features of Neo to the on premise environment afterwards. When this will happen I cannot answer."

Best regards

Rolf

Re: When will SAP Java AS for EE 6 see the light?

daniel_ruiz2 — Fri, 25 May 2012 02:33:48 GMT

Hi,

I'm curious.. Since you have everything running on Tomcat (and I believe you can easily deploy the same solution on any decent EE server) why would you want to use NWCE?

@Topic: Since Oracle acquired Sun "Java" has not been the focus of SAP - and I believe it never really was.

Re: When will SAP Java AS for EE 6 see the light?

Former Member — Fri, 25 May 2012 05:59:37 GMT

Hi Daniel,

because we are using a lot of SAP products, our systems/servers were hosted at the "SAP HOSTING".

It was never our aim, to operate servers in our company. Our company has the focus on the development of software and is not a professional hosting provider.

So we decided to use the Netweaver Java Stack (we are also using the SAP Enterprise Portal) as the runtime engine for all our java based web applications.

In present a lot of things changed:

- we have a different hosting provider, because SAP Hosting will close

- we (temporarely) operate some of our web-applicaiotns on Tomcat 7 servers in our company

Regards

Steffen

Re: When will SAP Java AS for EE 6 see the light?

hofmann — Fri, 25 May 2012 11:25:32 GMT

Hi,

I believe much of your (justified) frustration stems from your perception of NW Java. As NW Java is a J2EE server that supports many standards, compared to the J2EE servers from Oracle, IBM, etc it is a server meant to be used in a SAP environment. While Websphere is positioned as a server that you can use for everything and therefore is developed to be used for everything, the primary focus of NW Java is for: provide a web / Java environment for SAP.

IMHO because of this you don't get easily new features for NW Java, because: what will JEE 6 bring to how you can access SAP backend data? You get CAF, designed for exposing SAP information into a SAP system. You get a WD runtime. If you want to consume a BAPI that's really easy with NW Java, doing the same with Tomcat is way more complicated, as you first have to find out what other software you need to make the connection, the mapping, etc.

For opening up NW Java for other use cases, SAP gives us now NW Cloud. And there you get a state of the art Java environment. Why? Because NW Cloud is not only there to expose SAP data, it is also for writing state of the art web applications (and is competing with other Java cloud platforms that offer way more than NW Java).a

Re: When will SAP Java AS for EE 6 see the light?

rolf_paulsen — Fri, 25 May 2012 13:08:30 GMT

Hi Tobias,

probably you are correct concerning the perception of NW Java. But I disagree in several points

- NW Java was one of the first AppServers that supported JEE 5 standard. It supports ALL JEE 5 standards! This does not mtach a platform only to be used to access SAP backends. You write - "For opening up NW Java for other use cases, SAP gives us now NW Cloud." No - SAP already gave us the NW Java for ALL JEE 5 use cases!!! (There is no "a little JEE compliant" like no "a little pregnant)

- Forget CAF fot nontrivial use cases.

- WD Java runtime: There is no further active development.

- Consuming a BAPI with Tomcat is not difficult, see WD Java Demokit for Tomcat. What do you need? A JCO Jar...

- You write: "NW Cloud is not only there to expose SAP data, it is also for writing state of the art web applications (and is competing with other Java cloud platforms that offer way more than NW Java)" I do not think so. As Benny writes, NW cloud supports the "Java EE 6 Web Profile", a very small fraction of JEE6. And still no timeline when we can expect e.g. EJB 3.1 and simply JPA 2.0. SAP keeps giving us the runaround.

- My main bone of contention is the lack of any concrete statements about the timeline for JEE 6 support (and this is going on for NEO). Compare the statements of Benny from 2009 and now (and I do not blame Benny as the announcer). This is communication of SAP with their customers. I could accept if they said "sorry, NW Java is mature and we will never add any EE6 features". But the current state of the communication is not only frustrating, it is almost unbearable.

Regards

Rolf

Re: When will SAP Java AS for EE 6 see the light?

hofmann — Fri, 25 May 2012 15:21:54 GMT

I understand your frustration, but I believe you misinterpreted the intention of NW Java. As it offers J2EE 5, it was never actually placed as a full J2EE server that competes with Oracle, JBoss, IBM, etc. It was, is and will be a Java server for your SAP environment. I never actually saw someone from SAP actively putting NW Java as the better J2EE product. It was more like: oh, and when you do not want to have 2 J2EE servers in your landscape, you can use NW Java as your solely J2EE server. Some of the features SAP implemented looked more like: "yes, we do have it too" so SAP passed the pre-requisites checklist from big SAP customers (in the way Windows supported POSIX).

If you are developing applications that heavily depend on J2EE6, why NW Java at all? The common use case for NW Java is developing a web UI for backend data, the portal and publishing BI reports. Do you really need J2EE 6? With all its features when you use NW Java? For instance, JPA is nice, but in most use cases the data is stored in an ABAP system, not in the Java system.

Actually: what kind of applications do you develop? Sounds interesting.

Re: When will SAP Java AS for EE 6 see the light?

Former Member — Fri, 25 May 2012 15:55:20 GMT

I've been developing JEE 1.4/5 on SAP NW AS for five years now and I'd like to share my views on this subject.

The idea that SAP's Java AS should not be considered as a full fledged AS but just as a thin UI layer before the rock-solid Abap AS is pretty far from my opinion of SAP's NW AS.

I believe it is a great product which has been/can be used even on its own.

However I'd like to know whether Tobias has gained this insight from official SAP documents/manuals. It would be very important to find out whether NW AS is supposed to be really considered a full AS or not.

Thanks

Re: When will SAP Java AS for EE 6 see the light?

rolf_paulsen — Sun, 27 May 2012 10:38:39 GMT

Hi Nick,

a very good point. Let's read what SAP itself writes about its product:

Look here:

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw73/helpdata/en/4a/c49b2318e122ade10000000a42189b/content.htm

"The SAP NetWeaver Application Server is fully compliant with the Java EE 5 standards. You can develop enterprise applications as Java EE 5 modules, and thus benefit from the numerous advantages the new (remark RP: new?) standard introduces. Besides the runtime support, the SAP NetWeaver Application Server provides development support for Java EE 5. The SAP NetWeaver Developer Studio provides convenient tools for developing, deploying, and debugging Java EE 5 applications."

and here:

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw73/helpdata/en/0d/a3bb3eff62847ae10000000a114084/content.htm

"Application Server Java

Purpose

With the Java EE 5 certified application server that SAP provides you can develop Java EE applications based on the newest (remark RP: text stems from NW 7.30!!) Java EE standard as well as migrate existing J2EE applications.

The Application Server Java (AS Java) comprises features for ensuring its robustness, scalability, and supportability, such as configurable session failover support, built-in load balancing support, fast and robust shared memory based on request handling, and robust monitoring and unique supportability of non-functional problems based on SAP's own Java VM features.

The server offers full support of the latest Java EE 5 features, updates, and adjustments for simplifying the development of enterprise applications, such as EJB 3.0 (RP: new?), the new JSF 1.2 (remark RP: "new" would be JSF2.x), the new Java Persistency API 1.0 (RP: new would be 2.0), the updated Web services stack, and more. It provides an implementation of the Service Data Objects (SDO) 2.1 standard simplifying data programming for applications and frameworks, support for development of standard-based portlets, and a job scheduler implementation. With the Java Connector Architecture (JCA) 1.5 and full Java EE 5 Web Services support it enables connectivity to SAP and non-SAP backend systems and services."

Indeed, the SAP NW Java does not deserve to be restricted to the use case of a UI-layer for data stored in ABAP backends, it was designed as a fully featured and robust runtime and was never "sold" by SAP with any restrictions. It is a full Java EE5 App Server with some "goodies" that ease integration into SAP landscape, mainly WD Java, easy WS ABAP Integration via service groups an ABAP endpoint definition, BPM, and last but not least: Integration to SolMan.

NW AS would not be as powerful as it is if it was designed as an ABAP presentation toolbox.

In our project, we use NW Java in thisfull Java EE5 manner: application database with JPA (via EclipseLink), security via mapping of JEE 5 Roles in EJBs to UME actions, WS to SAP and non SAP, etc.

And it is really working fine even in large batch processes, maybe faster than ABAP batches because no enqueue lock are slowing down paralellism.

Nick, SAP and I consider the NW AS a full AS

BTW this is the greatest answered thread I have read so far

Regards

Rolf

Re: When will SAP Java AS for EE 6 see the light?

hofmann — Mon, 28 May 2012 12:13:14 GMT

Nick,

I came to my conclusion after working for some time with NW Java and the use case of a pure J2EE 5 standalone rarely crossed my desk. And when it showed up, it was in the context of: "we already have a J2EE server, can NW Java replace it".

As being standard compliant is important in the selling phase ("yes, we support, yes, you can, yes we are standard") in reality most apps do note make use of JEE 5. Developers tend to use the spring framework or to a platform that is better documented with a more vibrant developer community.

Re: When will SAP Java AS for EE 6 see the light?

hofmann — Mon, 28 May 2012 12:32:25 GMT

Rolf,

of course AS Java is a full Java application server. Never said something else. But IMO this is more by accident or side product to get it sold more easily by clients. For developing JEE applications in a NW Java standalone I'd be interested in knowing exactly why AS Java was chosen as the preferred platform. Because of JEE 5?

For Java applications you get other servers with a greater user community, more examples and at a more attractive price, with a faster release cycle and support for newer Java versions (and with less memory usage).