Development Configurations – Concepts

The development configuration (short: configuration) determines the viewpoint of a developer onto the development infrastructure: The configuration determines the software components to be developed and controls access to objects in the SAP NetWeaver Java Development Infrastructure. All developers who share the same configuration, work with the same consistent objects.

You use development configurations depending on your development scenario:

·        In Scenario 1, development configurations are not used.

In Scenario 2, development configurations are used only for access to the Design Time Repository. Use the development configuration wizard  to create them.

·        In Scenarios 2+ and 3, access to DTR and CBS is enabled via development configurations. Development configurations are created in the Change Management Service.

Purpose of Development Configurations

There is a large number of software components (SCs). Every one of these SCs exists in different states. For the different SCs, there are DTR workspaces containing the source files of these SCs in the correct version. An SC currently under development is not allowed to use all other SCs. For this reason, the person responsible for the development configuration provides all developers working on this SC with a configuration that points to a workspace, which contains exactly the SC to be developed and the SCs to be used. The administration supplies the workspace with the appropriate versions.

A configuration determines that a software component ABC, which is being developed in this configuration, is allowed to access software components XYZ and RST.

Advantages of Using Development Configurations

In a development landscape without configurations, you as a developer are usually forced to find out for yourself, which combinations of used components are possible or allowed. The development infrastructure facilitates this task considerably, because an appropriate configuration has to be created only once, to be then used by all participating developers. The configuration contains the information, which components of which state can be used together.

As far as the developer is concerned, a configuration defines a kind of “logical development system”: It combines a number of components in certain well-defined states, whose source code may well be distributed to different repositories. Every repository usually contains other states of these components as well, and possibly a large number of other components, which are not visible in this particular configuration. From the view point of the developer, a configuration “filters“ the information and the tools relevant for his or her work out of a possible very large development landscape, in which they are very likely distributed among several servers.

In a development landscape, configurations are created and maintained not by the individual developer, but centrally by the landscape administrator or the project management.

Summary

The development infrastructure uses configurations to offer the same consistent development environment to all participating developers.

·        The configuration selects those states and versions of components from the overall number that can be used together.

·        The dependencies between software components are specified and controlled.

·        All central services required for the development are referenced.