The New Mobile Features for Apple Mobile devices are planned to be included in SupportPack-5 from SAP. In this blog, we highlight some of the new capabilities arriving soon.
by Dr. Berg
Background
Last week I was speaking with Matt Lloyd from SAP Labs at the Xcelsius Bootcamp and got to see a demo of what mobile features are planned for SP-5 for the BusinessObjects 4.x environment.
First, it is a great leap for mobile solutions. The Mobile solution will first be for the Apple platform, but may be extended to others in the future. The solution is so simple it is great…
Some of the New Capabilities
In SP-5 SAP provides a new 'compatibility view' in Dashboards that shows during development what objects will render well on Apple mobile devices, and you can even filter on mobile objects and thereby avoid those that does not work well on Apple yet.
Also, in SP-5 SAP supports NOVA as the first mobile supported theme to make it easier for developers and use HTML-5 to render to the devices. You will also be able to see what fonts work best on a mobile device. These are marked with 'ios' next to the font selection. The recommended screen size is still 1024 x 768 for the mobile device and target size for touch objects are still 44 pixel (makes it easier to select on screen for people with ‘fat-fingers’ like me).
SAP has also done a good job in a first release for support of data sources. For example, in the integrated query panel you will find support for BICS connectors, OLAP (MDX) and relational sources. However you will need a platform (BI-4) to make the new mobile solution work. Actually, you will need to install both the SP-5 for dashboards as well as the SP-5 for the platform (either enterprise, edge, or crystal server).
Some Observations for the Future
On an interesting note, it was said that the new mobile solution will have a common library with dashboards and the new tool called 'Designer Studio", and that SAP may add also add SDK support to the tool next year. That will open up a whole new world of future capabilities.
So it seems like SAP is making the right moves on the Mobile platform. Moves that may remove much of the demand for 3rd party solutions that have filled this gap in previous releases. The short story is that dashboards will be available for the Apple devices in the very near future...
Dr. Berg