Programming with Persistent Classes(SE24) or BOPF(Business Obj.Processing Framework)

[Former Member]

Hi,

While searching for something else I came along BOPF (Business Object Processing Framework). As I know something about programming with Persistent Classes and it looked familiar but not quite the same. BOPF looks promising to me and want to try it in my next assignment. I already went to the BOPF space here on SCN and it certainly looks more coherent than Persistent Classes where you basically only get the class that provides for the conversion from DB data to and instance object and vice-versa.

So short question for those of you that worked with both concepts: how programming with Persistent Classes relates to using the BOPF : is BOPF a more streamlined concept  than Persistent Classes? Is BOPF an evolution of Persistent Classes, can it do more? Are there any drawbacks compared to using Persistent classes?

All input welcome.

Bart

[Former Member]

I had an evaluation about both concepts last year together with two colleagues. I evaluated mainly the BOPF part, but in the current project I use persistent classes.

Well, it's hard to say which one is the best. It depends, as usual, on your requirements. With BOPF you have a powerfull framework with many integrations (e.g. WebDynpro and Gateway; keyword SADL), which make it easy to fly. On the other hand sometimes it's quite hard to implement complex cases with the BOPF-API. So, I've read, many projects create Wrappers around the API.

On the other hand with persistent classes you have a quick implementation of your data access and getting as well as setting data is very easy.

So I would use persistent classes for little applications with minor user interactions. BOPF is very good for transactional applications with several or many screens (which can be generated in a simple way for WebDynpro as stated before) and for services via the SAP Gateway.

I hope I could help you with this.

[Former Member]

Hi Armin,

Tnx. for the quick reply on a more conceptual question. Then I stick to Persistent for now. I give BOPF a try once we are on S/4, seems there it is "the" way  to program your business logic in combination with the CDS thing.

Greetings,

Bart