SAP UI5 VS WebDynpro



SAP UI5 framework is getting rapid popularity among SAP web application developers.  Also, SAP has big plans on Fiori, the ready to use mobile web applications on SAP, built on SAP UI5 & SAP Gateway.

 

Moving from WebDynpro to UI5 development is a major shift in the development approach and skills. With this document, I wanted to highlight the key differences between these two commonly used UI frameworks from SAP.

 

Features	SAP UI5	Web Dynpro
Usage scenarios	Application to be used both on desktop and mobile devices  Casual usage scenario, targeting non SAP users  Simple screens  Fit for building stateless apps, both SAP and non-SAP	 To build desktop based web applications  Suitable for developing custom UI for complex SAP business Transactions  Simple and complex screens
Development Skills	HTML/HTML5 Javascript/JQeury CSS	Java – for WebDynpro Java ABAP–for WebDynpro ABAP
Platforms & tools	SAP Java stack SAP ABAP stack SAP HANA XS Non SAP Web Application servers like TOMCAT Eclipse with UI5 plugins	SAP Java stack – for WebDynpro Java SAP ABAP stack – for WebDynpro ABAP NetWeaver Developer Studio(NWDS) and NetWeaver Development Infrastructure(NWDI)
UI Features	Latest web UI features available Ability to customize and extend	Limited UI features Limited extension and customization possible
Browser rendering	Runs 100% on browser   All UI events client side	The applications runs on the server side   Majority of UI events are server side, minimum client side events
Application Performance	High performing due to client side events Browser rendering is faster as HTML content size is minimal	Frequent performance issues due to multiple server round trips Amount of HTML content generated is high, impacting the browser rendering performance
Mobile support	Fully supported with dedicated mobile libraries for UI	Not supported
Models	Supports OData,& JSON	Supports Java, ABAP, Web services models
UI Design	UI design requires extensive coding in HTML and Javascript   (SAP is currently developing new UI5 development environment with drag and drop features