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

[#1]

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

[junwu]

i am surprised jee 1.6 is supported.......

Architecture of the SAP NetWeaver Application Server - SAP Library

[karl_kessler]

Hi Jun Wu,

unfortunately this is a bug in the help documentation.

AS Java on premise does not support JEE 6.

We will fix this documentation error on help.sap.com asap.

Regards

Karl

[Vlado]

BTW, there has never been anything like "JEE 6" or "jee 1.6" even less. It's Java EE (short for Java™ Platform, Enterprise Edition). See: About "JEE"

[pk67]

Hello Karl,

can you point out, what is the roadmap or timeline for support of Java EE 6 and Java EE 7 in NetWeaver AS Java on premise?

Best Regards

Peter Kain

[Former Member]

Hello Peter,

SAP announced a new NetWeaver 7.5 Release that will be optimized to support Java 8.

But I could not find any information about the support of the EE 6 or EE 7 standard.

Is there anybody who knows more about the possible support of EE6 / EE7 in NetWeaver 7.5?

Regards

Steffen

[rolf_paulsen]

http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Articles/2015/July/SPI-a-foundation-for-the-future

Hi Steffen,

scolling here is a pain

In the above link, Karl Kessler writes:

"SAP is not repositioning new Java-based program models in the context of SAP NetWeaver AS Java. The adoption of new standards and innovative programming models are reflected in SAP's in-memory and cloud plaforms."

This is clear enough, isn't it? No EE 6, no EE 7. Let us be grateful for what we get: Java 8 and with it connection to current open source innovations and NWDS on Eclipse Luna. (Hopefully from now on as plugins so that we are not stuck to this version for 5 years again.)

And I believe Karl that adoption to Java 8 is a "major task to undertake". It is far better that this is done in good quality than to overcharge the development team with upgrade to Java EE 7.

We can just take apache olingo and develop cool SAPUI5 screens anyway.

At the end of Karl's article you can read that Java may get even more importance than "just" lift it from EE 5 to EE 7 (what would be great, anyway)

"To further support hybrid deployments, SAP is investing significant development effort into providing an on-premise runtime container for SAP HANA that is designed with Cloud Foundry principles in mind and supports Java, JavaScript (node.js), and a compatiblity layer for SAP HANA extended application services (XS), following the "bring your own language" paradigm."

IMHO the EE 5 is already a good, modern program model, compared to some other platforms.

Regards

Rolf

[Former Member]

We are currently using the full EE5 profile of the Netweaver 7.4 java system, and were looking forward to the EE7 profile implemented in 75.  If full EE profile is not in scope, we'll need to migrate off of the SAP Java platform all together which means finding a replacement for the portal as well.

[rolf_paulsen]

We were looking forward to the EE7 profile, too. It would be interesting to know what you are missing most.

E.g. JSF 2.2 will probably work with the mojarra implementatoin according to SCN threads.

Applcation side of JPA 2.0 is a trivial task using Eclipselink or hibernate (only the new methods of container classes like EntityManager.getMetamodel() do not work out of the box, you have to cast to your JPA 2.0 capable implementation, e.g. Eclipselink).

Apache Olingo to produce OData Services e.g. by annotation should work fine, too.

We will give CDI a try.

EJB and Webmethods will probably become a hard or even impossible task.

We just switched from NWDI to git/maven/jenkins and are glad about the speed, flexibility and agility of our development process.

For us, the restriction of having to stay on Java EE 5 currently does justify the migration off the SAP Java platform because we heavily make use of the integration into SAP Netweaver ABAP (e.g. user management). Java EE 7 would nave been great, but Java EE 5 works perfectly for what we have to do.

[Former Member]

I've always been interested in using java standard over proprietary SAP frameworks, programming languages etc in the web application space.  SAP is great for the core ABAP stack, but always was behind on the web application side. 

Just brainstorming for "what is next" for us as an SAP customer.  Obviously what is next for SAP is SAPUI5, SAP Gateway, OData etc.  My problem with following SAP down this path are two fold.

1. More servers, more complexity, more protocols, more licensing cost to be locked into something that in the end only SAP customers care about, vs staying more Java standard and open source where there are many many times more developers who contribute. 
2. I know everyone says "it is different this time", but if we are look at SAP's track record on the web front, they switch direction every 4 or 5 years.  Internet Transaction Server, Integrated ITS, Java WD, Abap WD, SAP UI5/Fiori...  what is next?  History speaks for itself.  SAP addresses their shortcoming on the web application side by introducing something proprietary which already exists in the open source world.  At the time, the framework can seem modern/up to date, but over time they can't keep up with the rest of the IT world and soon their proprietary solution is so far behind they need to throw it out and start over.  We the customers have to pay to transition away from the old to the new solution.  Who on earth will use SAPUI5 other than SAP customers?  Even though SAPUI5 is open source, I don't seeing it making any difference.

I've started a separate thread brainstorming what it would take to move from SAP Netweaver Java to something open source like Glassfish or Wildfly to get the full EE profile SAP is no longer interested in providing.  I would love if we can get a group of minds working together to see if it is possible!