SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer
Visual Composer is SAP’s graphical software modeling tool. This Web-based application enables business process experts and developers to quickly create business application components, without coding[1].
Visual Composer produces applications in a declarative form, thereby enabling completely code-free execution mode for multiple runtime environments. It provides full application lifecycle support by maintaining the connection between an application and its model throughout its lifecycle. Visual Composer is designed with an open architecture, which enables developers to extend its design-time environment and modeling language, as well as to integrate external data services.
As a result, Visual Composer modelers increase productivity by reducing their development effort time from weeks and months to days. Domain experts gain the means to express their requirements directly rather than conveying them to developers. This narrows the gap between application definition and implementation.
Starting with a blank canvas, the Visual Composer user draws the application in Visual Composer Storyboard (workspace), without writing a single line of code. Since no traditional programming skills are needed, business process experts can prototype, design and produce entire applications.
A typical workflow for creating, deploying and running an application using Visual Composer is:
1. Create a model:
- Discover data services and add them to the model
- Select necessary UI elements and add them to the model
- Connect model elements to define the model logic and data flow
2. Edit the layout of the application by arranging the UI elements and the controls that they contain.
3. Deploy the model (includes compilation, validation and deployment to a selected environment).
4. Run the application.
Visual Composer Design Board
The model contains a form in which the user enters data, a data service that receives the input values, and an output table that displays the results returned by the data service.
Visual Composer Layout Board
The application contains a Search input form with an input field and a button that transfers data to the data service. The data retrieved from the data service is displayed in the Results table.