SAP NetWeaver Development Infrastructure (NWDI)

Efficiently Managing the Complexities in Java-Based Development

The SAP NetWeaver Development Infrastructure (short: NWDI, or JDI in previous releases), together with the SAP NetWeaver Developer Studio, provides a complete Java development environment for developers, administrators,  quality managers, and testers. Members of each role find everything they need for the software creation process in NWDI's central services. The main benefit of working in a centrally-defined development environment for developers is having direct access to all development objects needed for the specific project in the correct version, including both sources and archives, pre-defined or recently created. For administrators the centralized approach means to be able to set up and control different development projects in one application, and for the quality manager changing the state of the test environment is a well-defined process.

 

Get acquainted with the concepts and terminology of NWDI, download the Trial Version, and bookmark this page for easy access to the best documentation.

NWDI in a Nutshell

The knowledge of a few terms will help you understand the NWDI discussions and the demo of the development process:

  • Product: A piece of software that you run or sell to a customer. Products consist of software components (SCs).
  • Software Component (SC): An installable piece of software. SCs contain development components (DC) and are (re-)used in products. SCs "know" their dependencies to other SCs.
  • Development Component (DC): A piece of software on the granularity of an Eclipse-project containing all the development objects like java classes, interfaces, etc. What is new in DCs is that they define metadata as an add-on to a pure project, which define "DC-interfaces", the public parts, and use dependencies to other DCs - these are checked by the component-based build process.
  • Track and Development Configuration:  A track is a set of steps, "logical systems", and paths defined in the NWDI to create a product consisting of SC versions. Tracks are defined by an administrator leading from development to consolidation, assembly (which creates a new SC-archive), test, and production. One NWDI can host many tracks.
    Development configurations describe the development system to work in for the developer - either DEV or CONS - mainly with central storage locations for sources and archives and connections to source code control system DTR, central build environment CBS and transport system CMS. They are automatically created with a track.

The main elements of the SAP NetWeaver Development Infrastructure are:

Video-Demo on NWDI

NWDI-Based Development Process  

The NWDI provides a comprehensive development process for Java-based applications. See a demo of the complete development cycle in the NWDI starting with the creation of a new product, reuse of already existing software components, preparation of a development landscape for the development team. Watch a developer work in that environment creating a "HelloWorld"-like piece of software, which he then releases for the further steps of the development process going into the consolidation phase. From here by an assembly step the new software component is prepared for delivery so that it can be deployed into productive systems.

NWDI Community

The NWDI page provides a focal point of information sharing for the NWDI developer - from the novice seeking basic documentation to the experts answering forum posts. Want to contribute? Find out how.

 

Once you have an idea what the NWDI is you can find specific information on the daily work and tips & tricks for the NWDI in several areas:

Resources on NWDI - Articles and blogs in the SDN that will help you better understand and work more efficiently with the NWDI.

NWDI documentation in the SAP Help Portal describing concepts and procedures in the NWDI for SAP NetWeaver 7.0:

Wiki with FAQs here on SDN

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