Neptune DXP - Open Edition

Main components

The Neptune DXP - Open Edition comprises the following main components:

  • Launchpad

  • App Designer

  • API Designer

  • Workflow Engine

  • Script Editor

  • Application Building Blocks

Launchpad

The Launchpad hosts applications and provides these applications with services, such as navigation and personalization.

The Launchpad serves as the single entry point to the Neptune DXP - Open Edition. The Launchpad consists of tiles, which are displayed depending on the role of the user. Each tile represents an application that a user can open. Tiles can also show live data.

Applications in the launchpad

The Launchpad can host the following applications, which can run in parallel:

  • Applications built in the Neptune DXP - Open Edition

  • Applications built in the Neptune DXP - SAP Edition

  • HTML5 web applications

  • React applications

  • SAP WebDynpro applications

App Designer

Use the App Designer to create HTML5-based applications.

Features

  • Comprises over 200 Open UI5 framework components, ranging from basic elements to complex UI patterns. You can use the components out of the box or extend them to meet your requirements.

  • Enables developers to quickly integrate APIs with no-code data binding.

  • Supports manual or automatic language translation, using Google Translate. Your apps can automatically become multilingual.

  • Comes with an integrated tool to see the API architecture of an app.

  • Application Building Blocks speed up development by combining modular groups of elements.

  • Offers a built-in version management. A UI sample library review enables the testing of interfaces and functionalities before implementation.

API Designer

With the API Designer, you create and configure reusable API definitions.

Features

  • Comes with a graphical user interface.

  • Enables you to create API operations manually, import them from another Open Edition, or a Swagger 2.0 file.

  • Generates APIs for tables within the Neptune DXP.

Workflow Engine

With the Workflow Engine, you design, build, run, and manage workflows, starting from simple approvals to entire end-to-end processes that span across different organizations and applications.

The Workflow Engine facilitates and automates processes that require tasks to be performed by humans. Each step of a transaction can be easily monitored. Processes are completed from the beginning to the end.

Script Editor

With the Script Editor, you create server-side scripts that run in their own separate process on the server. You can use APIs, tables, global scripts, and npm modules. Scripts are used to extend your instance beyond standard configurations.

With a script, you can automate processes, add functionalities, integrate your instance with outside applications, and more.

Application building blocks

Application Building Blocks are modular and reusable development components that vary in size from small code snippets and connectors to larger groups of user interface components and entire application templates.

Neptune provides a growing library of these Application Building Blocks. You can download them for free in the Neptune DXP Marketplace.

Runtime environment

Neptune DXP is a Node.js runtime environment. Node.js is an open-source, cross-platform, back-end JavaScript runtime environment.

The Neptune DXP - Open Edition can benefit from npm (Node package manager), which is an online repository for open source Node.js projects and libraries.

With npm, you can extend the functionality of the Neptune DXP - Open Edition with the choice of over a million different packages, ranging from managing connections to legacy databases to handling authentication tokens.

Databases

By default, the Neptune DXP - Open Edition comes with an embedded SQlite database, which can be used for database tables. The Neptune DXP - Open Edition also uses this database for its own configuration tables.

Alternatively, you can use the following databases:

  • PostgreSQL

  • Microsoft SQL Server

  • SAP HANA databases

TypeORM

All supported databases can use TypeORM. ORM (object-relational mapping) is a technique that lets you query and manipulate data from a database using an object-oriented paradigm.

You can use TypeORM statements instead of traditional SQL statements to interact with the database layer.

Comparison between Neptune DXP - Open Edition and Neptune DXP - SAP Edition

Hosting

The Neptune DXP - SAP Edition uses ABAP Runtime ICF node as the runtime environment. Each module has its own hosting methods. The Neptune DXP - SAP Edition is embedded within the SAP system and runs within the SAP NetWeaver stack.

The Neptune DXP - Open Edition can be hosted on multiple platforms, for example, Google Cloud Platform, AWS or Microsoft Azure. The Neptune DXP - Open Edition is as easy to deploy as a Docker container with Cloud Foundry.

Components

Even though the Neptune DXP - Open Edition and the Neptune DXP - SAP Edition use different foundations, they share a number of similar components:

  • Launchpad

  • App Designer

  • Application Building Blocks

Neptune DXP - Open Edition comes with the following additional applications:

  • API Designer

  • Script Editor

  • Workflow Engine

The Neptune DXP - SAP Edition additionally offers API Factory, which makes it possible to automate the REST API generation of the following SAP artifacts:

  • ABAP classes

  • Function modules

  • BAPIs

  • ALV standard and custom reports