Lesson-1: What is Agentry: The basics

It’s the age of smart phones and we prefer to do most of our works through them. Mobile application development is a fast growing industry and it is a great career option undoubtedly. We will learn about enterprise mobile app development through Agentry in this blog. First of all, let’s know about mobile applications in brief. Mobile applications can be broadly divided into 4 types:

1.     Native apps: Native applications are applications that has been developed for a particular platform(android/iphone) and it can take advantage of the features provided by the particular OS(camera, GPS etc.). They offer very good experience to the user in terms of speed and reliability. You can access them from google play store. Example of native apps: Angry birds mobile app.

2.     Web Apps: A web app is the mobile version of any website. You don’t have to install a web app and you don’t need any available space on your device. It loads within your mobile browser. Web apps are limited in what they can do effectively in terms of features and they will generally always require an Internet connection to work. Example: When you connect to facebook from your mobile browser, you see a web application.

3.     Hybrid Apps: It combines best of both native and web apps. It can use the features provided by operating system of the mobile and behaves as a web app in terms of internet connectivity. It’s not as fast as native app as it depends upon the internet speed. You have to install this kind of application on your mobile. It requires knowledge of both native code and web technologies to develop hybrid apps. Example: Facebook mobile application.

4.     Agentry Apps: Agentry app is a type of enterprise mobile application(used by enterprises like: Infosys, Wipro or any utility sector) and is accessible only to a set of authenticated users. It is accessed through an agentry client. The client acts as a container to hold the application data by connecting to the server, once the application has been downloaded it can function both online and offline. So, technically you never download the actual application to your device but access it by using a client. The client is made available by an enterprise app store rather than google play store. This will be more clear as we start developing the application.

Introduction to Agentry:
Agentry is a tool used to develop enterprise mobile applications. It provides a set of inbuilt functionalities for development and can be accessed via Eclipse editor. It supports building mobile app for any platform including Win32, Window CE, Android and iOS (supports iPhone and iPad). Syclo introduced this tool which is currently owned by SAP. Agentry is now a part of SAP Mobile Platform(SMP). SMP lets you create any kind of mobile application and agentry is just one of those types. SAP has designed a standard application named: SAP Work Manager using agentry which can be used for enterprises to meet their business needs.

More About Agentry:

This tool becomes very easy once you understand the basics of it. However, there will be some complex functionalities which will need a substantial amount of brain storming. We will be building this application using Eclipse editor. All you need to do is install the agentry plugin within the Eclipse editor (You will find the detailed steps in subsequent posts).

After building the application in Eclipse we have to deploy it to the Agentry server (SMP Server). As we know for accessing any information on the server, we need a client. In this case we will need agentry client which is a native application. It is different for different platforms and has to be downloaded separately from app store for each platform. Once you have this client application on your mobile, you can connect to the application deployed on the server giving the URL of the same. Then it will fetch all the application related data from the server and backend (Backend can be any database used inside that enterprise for storing data e.g: Microsoft SQL server, SAP, IBM DB2). After all the relevant data gets downloaded, you can use it as a native application.

Let me explain the above points with the help of a simple real life scenario. Suppose, a certain utility sector wants to develop an agentry application for managing data entered by the field users. First of all they should have a back end which can store all the enterprise information. Then the development team has to deploy the agentry application on the SMP server and provide each field user with a mobile device with the agentry client installed on it. They will synchronize the client with server entering the provided URL and credentials and download all the application data into their device. This application will fetch basic information about all the work orders (work order number, start and finish dates, address details, tasks to be performed). Post receiving the work details, the field worker will enter other required details on the mobile application and perform a transmit. This transmit will connect the device to the database through the Agentry server and add/update the records based on some pre-defined logic. Thus, all the required information will be stored on the backend with ease and the user/planner can access the information 24X7. Below is a sample screen shot of Agentry client for iPhone.

Fig 1: Agentry client for iphone platform

You can download the Agentry client from the app store. Search for SAP Work Manager.