Visual WebGui Case Studies

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SAP Labs Mr. SAAR: "VWG is the best AJAX framework"

December 09, 2007 :: Categories: IT, Software :: 24965 Views :: Download as PDF:

Company Profile
Serving more than 43,400 customers worldwide, SAP is the world's largest business software company and the world's third-largest independent software provider overall. SAP has a rich history of innovation and growth that has made it a true industry leader. Today, SAP employs more than 42,750 people in more than 50 countries. SAP has leveraged its extensive experience to deliver a comprehensive range of solutions to empower every aspect of business operations. By using SAP solutions, organizations of all sizes – including small businesses and midsize companies – can reduce costs, improve performance, and gain the agility to respond to changing business needs.

The need
SAP develops it software in multiple global development hubs it calls SAP Labs. The company is constantly striving to shorten development cycles and improve the overall quality of software in order to continue to maintain its dominant market position. SAP’s management ordered a global test management system be developed in order to manage testing resources and test plans. Requirements called for integration with Mercury test automation platforms and a highly usable web based interface for planning, executing and monitoring tests on a large number of global dispersed test systems. SAP Lab’s NetWeaver UI Test Development team which was charged with creating a global, centralized test management application needed to deliver a high quality solution fast.

The Challenge
SAP Labs NetWeaver UI Test Development team, of the UI Cross Development organization needed to deliver a complex, data intensive, highly interactive web application with limited time and resources. The team decided on the .net platform since it offered better connectivity with the HP Software (Mercury) QuickTest Professional platform. They originally started to develop the application in ASP.net in January 2007. They later tried out ASP.net AJAX (Atlas at the time) and were unhappy with the quality and breadth of controls. The team considered use of 3^rd party web controls from Infragistics, however the price and complexity involved in implementation were inhibiting. The team finally adopted Visual WebGui after a successful test they made proved it worthy.

The Solution
The Visual WebGui based solution called SNAP (SAP NetWeaver Test Automation Project) delivers great value to the company. The Web based solution serves over 500 users worldwide and has garnered high praise from both users and onlookers as a very responsive, highly usable system.

Asaf Saar – Team Leader of SAP Labs NetWeaver UI Test Development team, says: "My team and I started with plain asp.net, and then we tried the Microsoft .NET Ajax framework (back when it was called Atlas). We have also tried other open source AJAX frameworks and some commercial solutions. None of them answered our needs. Then came this small Israeli Software Company called Gizmox, they developed an AJAX framework with a totally different concept then what was available out there. Basically, with Visual WebGui, you develop your web applications as if you are developing a Win Form based application. Then you compile your project and magic, you get a web page with an amazing rich look and feel. Of course, since it’s all AJAX there are no refreshes, no postbacks, and it’s very fast”.

By using Visual WebGui, the NetWeaver UI Test Development team delivered the application with a smaller team in 9 months with 2.5 developers instead of the originally planned allocation of 5 developers for over a year. Ongoing maintenance and new releases are handled by an even smaller team. The system was previewed last September at SAP headquarters in Walldorf, Germany and received rave reviews on its browser based UIs. “Developers were amazed that it’s all DHTML and Javascript running on the browser”, says Asaf Saar. He later also mentioned that - “Developers across SAP Labs teams have since considered using VWG for their projects after seeing the outcome of our project”.

Screenshots
SNAP – SAP NetWeaver Test Automation Project – Job Scheduling Module