Offline capable SMP Applications

[Former Member]

Hi Everyone

I am looking for some information about the "true" offline capabilities of SMP applications.

I have been getting different information from different sources.
So I want to create an offline application which behaves in the following way:

1. I can access the application offline
2. I can view all data offline
3. I can edit data and save it offline
4. I can submit data offline
5. The application will "sync" with the back end when it comes back online.

From what I understand I have to write the functionality to do the above from scratch and I can only use a native approach according to SAP.

Is the above statement correct?

Does SMP (MBO's) provide any type of submission queuing functionality that is built in, that will sync with the server when it comes back online?

Do MBO's allow offline data editing and saving?
Is the above possible using oData proxy?

We have created a true offline capable HTML5 based app that runs in the HWC using a generic MBO, but we had to create it all from scratch, editing, saving and offline submission.
We also had to take into account the fact that windows phone uses a different db system than the other devices.
We store submissions of data in a database and trigger the submissions when the device comes back online or the app is restarted.

I want to know if I can use SMP to simplify the process, i.e. use built in offline functionality of MBO's or Odata.

Any ideas on views of the above are greatly appreciated.

[Jitendra_Kansal · Accepted solution]

Hi Andrew,

Your all 5 points are possible in an offline app. In one of my earlier project we have implemented all these functionalities using SUP 2.2 MBO for iOS device.

for SMP 3.0 onward, there is offline supportability for OData based apps.

Go with OData development approach.

Rgrds,

Jitendra

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks a lot for the link, very interesting.

Just out of interest, how did you implement the offline submission system using MBO API?

What area of the API did you use for the offline submission?

The new oDATA API seems great for offline functionality, I will investigate further.

Andrew

[midhun_vp · Accepted solution]

A local DB is created by SUP in your device (ex.ultralite), when you are making changes to existing data it will be locally stored if the device is offline. The application checks whether the device is offline, if it yes you can call the API Save on the local DB (ex.MBOProjectDB.Save();) after calling the MBO operation. If the device is online along with save api you have to call Synchronize(); that will update the data.

- Midhun VP

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the detailed answer.

I will check it out, the oData API appears very helpful from an offline app point of view.

It makes me wonder why some of the fiori app's are not hooked in to allow this type of offline functionality.

Cheers

Andrew

[midhun_vp · Accepted solution]

Fiori apps are based on SAPUI5, it is a UI framework for web applications. ie you can run these apps in mobile/desktop browsers. There are limitations for web applications, they are not capable to access native features of device like local db , camera etc. In future we can expect these additional features. Have a look at this interesting feature coming for fiori apps,

Again, using the cordova framework +sapui5 you can use native features. You can find examples on this.

- Midhun VP

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Yes, I understand that Fiori apps are SAPUI5 + gateway, but why can't they be ported into SMP and hooked into use the oData offline API functionality.

Especially with a SAP Fiori client, why does the client not allow these offline API's by default?

They are all built by SAP?

Cheers

Andrew

[midhun_vp · Accepted solution]

Fiori apps are based on web technologies. It has its own limitations. Thats why Fiori apps can't replace native apps, its meant only for small business scenarios. Odata SDK is for native apps, so the Odata APIs can't use with Fiori directly. SMP support Fiori in future to give more features to Fiori app set. Fiori apps are developed by SAP.

- Midhun VP

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Midhun,

Can you share some steps to do it?

or some screenshots?

Thanks in advance.