Development Trends

In the good old days when the SAP Portal was brand new and everybody discussed what kind of content would/could be available in there in the near future, there was always one example which was demo’ed again and again: The Stock ticker or The list of preferred stocks and related updates. Although we knew that most customers did not have this “need”, the demo continued to survive – and it took a while  before there was a real proposal on serious content.

Will the same thing happen to SAP Flash Island?

…. will Google Maps examples and colour full Piechart examples be the “Stock ticker” for SAP Flash  Island?

Maybe… or maybe not… maybe there are a lot of inspiration to find in the Adobe Flex community, because there are already a lot of exising components and applications available – and a lot of different API’s are already supported by Adobe Flex. The inspiration might lead you to a ‘non-stock-ticker’ for SAP Flash Island.

If you visit Adobe.com/devnet you might find some inspiration to a new mashup – which could be a SAP Flash Island candidate  – just to mention a few:

• Component: Adobe Cocomo – read more
• API:  Google Analytics – read more
• API: Facebook – read more

SAP Flash Island is a new/upcoming feature in SAP Netweaver and the discussions about what kind of features we could/would expect in these Islands have already started. SAP and Adobe have already given some examples – and for people working within the SAP area, the upcoming Flash Islands could open up for quite new features and possibilities.

The other day – I ran into an interesiting project at Adobe Labs. A project called Adobe Cocomo which is in it’s final testphase. It’s a set of  hosted services which will make it easy to add social capabilities to your Adobe Flex application (Flash Island). You will need to download a SWC to use in the SAP Flash Island project – with this Cocomo interface it will be quite easy to use  some of the following features in your SAP Flash Island:

1. VoIP Audio
2. Webcam Video
3. Chat
4. Multi-User Whiteboards
5. Real-Time File Sharing
6. User Management
7. Roles and Permissions
8. Robust Data Messaging

You might think – “… why implement features we already have in Skype or Messenger in a WebDynpro application”? Well – with a SAP Flash Island you will have a welldefined integration path to the backend system, masterdata, transactional data and authorizations – and could consider to use this as input (and output) to the Flash application.  So suddenly you could display a snapshot of the latest sales figures at the multi user white board and discuss the sales progress in a Webcam, VoIP or chat session – just as an example of the possibilities.

Six Thinking Hats

You might take it a step further – and look at some of the methods behind the “Six Thinking Hats” (also known as “The de Bono Hats system”) and use them as an inspiration to enhance the SAP/Cocomo features and end up with a SAP Flash Island application which will do much more than Skype or Messenger – and it will be integrated with SAP Netweaver.

Read more:

Adobe Labs Cocomo website

Six Thinking Hats/The de Bono Hats system

An Adobe Flex template project for SAP Flash Islands

SAP ABAP developers: How to get started with Adobe FLEX – part II

Are you thinking about building a realtime Social Network Application with Adobe Flex…? Then you might want to visit the Cocomo project at Adobe Labs. In here you will find a set of hosted services which will make it easy to add social capabilities to your Adobe Flex application. You will need to register in the developer portal – and after this you will be able to download the Cocomo SDK, after this you are ready to add the SWC components to your RIA application. Currently the following features are available in Cocomo:

1. VoIP Audio
2. Webcam Video
3. Chat
4. Multi-User Whiteboards
5. Real-Time File Sharing
6. User Management
7. Roles and Permissions
8. Robust Data Messaging

If you know Adobe Connect – you will realize that some of the features in Cocomo are the same (I miss the desktop sharing possibility – but maybe it will turn up in Cocomo later).

Cocomo is currently in a testing phase – and the limitations are currently set to:

1. 25 concurrent users
2. 15,000 cumulative user minutes per month
3. 250,000 messages published per month
4. 3 GB bandwidth (in + out) per month

Go to the Adobe Labs Cocomo website