Integrating Adobe Flex and Rich Islands for Adobe Flash

This article provides an overview of how you can use the Adobe Flash Platform, including Adobe Flex and Adobe Flex Builder, to create Rich Islands for SAP Web Dynpro applications.

Adobe Flash Platform

The Adobe Flash Platform includes Adobe Flash, Adobe Flex, and Adobe Flash Player. Flash applications are built using Adobe Flash Professional and Flex applications are built using Adobe Flex Builder. However, both products create the same compiled output, which is a SWF file (see Figure 1). SWF files are rendered in a browser using the Adobe Flash Player.

Technology overview

Using Adobe Flash or Adobe Flex you can generate a Flash SWF file, which contains a UI component that you would like to import into NetWeaver (see Figure 2). When the SWF file is integrated into the Web Dynpro component, it is called a Rich Island and can interact with other Web Dynrpo components by passing data and events back and forth.

You publish and deploy the Web Dynpro application as normal and view it in a browser. The Rich Island will be rendered by the Flash Player.

Developer overview

SAP provides two sets of libraries for Rich Island development (see Figure 3). Flex developers will register the SWC file as a library into Flex Builder to access the Rich Island functionality and then import the classes using the import statement. The Flashisland.register() function registers the Flex application as a Rich Island for use with Web Dynpro.

From Flex Builder, you compile a SWF file which is then imported into the Web Dynpro component. NetWeaver ABAP 7.01 and NetWeaver Java CE 7.1.1 access the Flash Islands SWF library to link Web Dynpro components with the Rich Islands SWF file.

Architecture overview

The SAP programming model is rendered at runtime into the Web Dynpro browser session that contains the Rich Island. The Rich Island behaves as a Web Dynpro control, but is a SWF file rendered in Adobe Flash Player.

Where to go from here

Refer to the following resources to learn more about Rich Islands for Adobe Flash:

• Quick Start: Spend 1 hour setting up a working rich island example.
• In-depth Flex tutorials for SAP developers: Learn how to build an interactive Flex application from scratch following a series of six focused tutorials.
• Web Dynpro tutorial for Flex developers: Get oriented to SAP development by creating a Web Dynpro application.
• Rich Island development for SAP and Flex developers: Integrate the Flex and Web Dynpro applications to create a working rich island example.