Application Frontend Service now generally availab...

Yogananda

As part of our exciting SAP Build release, we're happy to announce the release of Application Frontend service, a new SaaS application on SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) Trail account for US region for hosting, serving and operating frontend applications.

SAP BTP Trial accounts can be deployed with limited to five(5) applications per subaccount.

Now, you can enjoy the following benefits of Application Frontend Service

What is Application Frontend Service?

Host, serve, and manage frontend applications to extend SAP business solutions.

Application Frontend service lets you host and serve frontend applications. It serves as a single entry point for hosting web-based UI applications to extend SAP's business solutions. The service provides tools for deploying and managing applications, serving static resources, routing backend calls to defined targets, and observability tools.

Application Frontend service is included in the SAP Build.

Application Frontend service supports various channels for managing applications, such as the commonly used Generic Application Content Deployer (GACD) for multitarget applications (MTA), a dedicated UI in the cockpit, and a CLI. These options allow you to choose the channel that best suits your needs.

Application Frontend is a SaaS application which is not coupled to any specific SAP BTP runtime environment or other SAP BTP applications. You can find and subscribe to the service from the SAP BTP cockpit. Application Frontend is also equipped with a service broker to support interaction flows using service instances, for example when using MTA deploy in the CF environment.

While there is native support in the good old MTA concept for lifecycle management, Application Frontend also provides a command line interface (CLI) as a first-class tool for managing your applications. With the CLI, you can directly interact with the service and execute all actions supported by Application Frontend to enjoy fast response times and new integration opportunities.

High Level Overview of Application Frontend Service - Deployment

Prerequisites to enable Application Frontend Serivce

Go to your SAP BTP Trail Account - Subaccount
Go to your Instance and Subscription - Subscribe for SAP Cloud Identity Services
Enable SAP IAS and Trust & Auth with enabled SAP IAS
Go to Entitlements - Select Application Frontend Service
Select 2 checkbox for enabling the Plan (Developer and Application)
Create a Role Collections and Assign to your User (SAP IAS enabled)

Go to Instances and Subscription - Select Application Frontend Service from dropdown with Plan - Trial

Go to Instances and Subscription - Select Application Frontend Service with Plan - Developer

Create a New Role Collection

Assign Role to newly created Role Collection

Application Frontend Service Library & CLI (Command Line)

npm install -g /appfront-cli

afctl login --sso -a <api_endpoint>

afctl push

Conclusion

Application Frontend Service is a game-changer for Cloud Foundry users. By simplifying UI development, enhancing scalability, and promoting consistency, AFS empowers developers to create high-quality applications more efficiently. As cloud-native development continues to evolve, integrating tools like AFS will be crucial in staying ahead of the curve and delivering exceptional user experiences.

For more detailed insights, you can check out the original blog posts :

Introducing Application Frontend Service : Application Frontend Service
Simple UI Applications with Application Frontend Service : DEV Community
Application Frontend Service Help Documentation : Guide and Development
Application Frontend Service Onboarding Service - AppFront trial on-boarding help page