Well, in my quest to convert some of my applications from iOS or Web Dynpro to UI5, I’ve recently run into something new.  I had a table of information, and my UI5 was able to render the table and put in the correct number of rows, but all the data was the same.  Every row was identical, and it was the last row in my table.  After some digging, I found a rather simple solutions.

https://scn.sap.com/thread/3670270

Thanks to SCN for this, but the issue was in my Gateway service.  I needed to make the key of the table unique.  This was interesting to me because in the iOS, this didn’t make any difference.  So perhaps my developer jumped through some extra hoops, or it’s just a function of XML.  Regardless, make sure your entity set keys form a unique row (I just had to update my services to include an input for the key field (didn’t matter for reading the service).

Thanks for reading,

After trying to do everything myself for many years, my buddy Jeff finally beat me over the head enough to realize that it is impossible.  For those you that know me, you know that I like to be self-sufficient.  I depending on other people, I hate waiting for others to get things done, so often I just do things myself.  Here’s the problem with that approach.

• Time is the most valuable commodity I have.
• The best of my time should be spend doing what can make me the most successful.
• No one can be an expert at everything.
• All the time I spend doing it myself, could have been spent doing something more valuable.

You get the idea.  Well, finding prospects is one of the most important things any business can do.  The problem is that I had misguided notions that if I talk to my friends, past clients, doing a little blogging and have a website the sales will just start flowing in.  Well, for any of you in business, you know that isn’t the case.  Software seems to be especially difficult, at least in the SAP space, because to get in the door you need to convince a lot of people.  You need to convince the business, business managers/directors, and then IT needs to sign off on it since you’ll be installing programs in their environment.  But even before you get to that point…  you need to find people to talk to, you need to find the right people that can say yes to get the process started, and even if you find them, it doesn’t mean they will ever take your calls, respond to your emails, or take your meetings.

This is where Jeff finally got through to me.  We need to work with people that already have relationships with people we want to talk to.  This is doubly good because if you work with someone that already has relationships, not only do they know the people, but the people know them.  So you can get a warm introduction and a better chance to at least be heard 🙂  The key is that this needs to be a win-win situation for you and the partner.  The key is being able to provide something of value in exchange for the introductions.  Some of it will be monetary, some of it needs to be access to our contacts so our partner can do the same thing.

This is the road I’m just starting to travel down.  If any of you have any ideas, advice, or are interested in partnering, please reach out.  I’d love to hear from you.

mpiehl@gojavellin.com

Thanks for reading,

 

I talked a little about 2015, and how I’m glad the year is past.  For me, 2015 was a big rebuilding year.  The problem with rebuilding years is that you usually aren’t “winning”.  I often go back to football, whenever your favorite team has a bad season, what’s the common thing people say?  “This is a rebuilding year”, “We had to get some pieces in place before we could start winning again”, etc.  While this can often be an excuse, sometimes it really is true.  The problem is that usually when it is true, it means you were making mistakes in the previous years.

Well, that was exactly what happened with JaveLLin last year.  It truly was a rebuilding year for me.  I finally found some pieces I was missing, and then I found out that much of what I was spending time and money on, were the wrong things.  I was spending $20k to be a vendor for 4 days, when I could have spread that money out to 15 shows, got myself in front of a lot more people, and could have been doing presentations.

I spent the past 6 months trying to get myself into a position to make myself and my company more visible.  Yeah, I spent time developing new features, but for me, that’s my reward.  If I can get all my marketing stuff done for the day, then I can develop some stuff.

Now that the groundwork is in place, I think I know where I need to pivot my business to get myself back on the winning track.  How about you?  Are you rebuilding?  Or better yet, have been constantly managing things so that you can have a championship team year after year?

Thanks for reading,

I don’t know about you, but I’m glad that 2015 is in the books.  Do you ever have one of those years where it seems like the expenses just keep piling on?  For me, that was last year.  The thing is that most of the expenses weren’t really anything bad, in fact they were a building block for things to come.  How much of your life is like that?  We all go through things that suck at the time, but looking back, you realize how you can build off of that.

For example, last year I had to replace both of my heating/AC units.  That was a big bite out of the wallet, but because I’ve had a few really good years consulting, I had the money saved and more importantly, this is something I won’t need to deal with for at least 10 years.

My point is that everything that happens to us can be good or bad, but most of the time it depends on how you look at it.  Every experience could be construed as negative, “why does this always happen to me?” type thinking…  or you can choose to build on it.  You can choose to focus on how the experience made you stronger, helped you get where you are today, and will help you achieve your goals.

Thanks for reading,

Well, I wish I could say this was an easy thing I finally figured out…  but it was a hard fought victory 🙂  I spent more hours than I care to admit fighting through this.  My issue that I had a list pulled from gateway service.  The problem was that when I would click on an entry in the list, the values were not being populated.  Of course, I tried to extend what I learned, and that got me into trouble.  But like everything, I found my home 🙂

Let’s start at the beginning.  First, I used the following tutorial as my baseline.

http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/go/portal/prtroot/docs/library/uuid/8022ac87-1f60-3110-5383-fa68a91d7f8b?overridelayout=true&59017145622993

This was great, but it was using static data.  I had services built for my iOS apps, so I decided to start by calling one of those.  It was good.  I was able to build the list, but try as I might, I just couldn’t get the data into the detail screen.

Here’s what I finally figured out.

component.js

oView.setModel(oModel, “orders”);

this was a switch from the tutorial, where the model didn’t get a name.  I thought this would make no difference.  Boy was I mistaken.  Here’s what I needed to do  to finish this change

app.controller.js

page.setBindingContext(context, “orders”);

here, I didn’t realize I could add a 2nd parameter.  I needed to add my model name.

master.controller.js

handleListItemPress : function (evt) {
var context = evt.getSource().getBindingContext(“orders”);
this.nav.to(“Detail”, context);
},

handleListSelect : function (evt) {
var context = evt.getParameter(“listItem”).getBindingContext(“orders”);
this.nav.to(“Detail”, context);
},

the getBindingContext() needed to list the name “orders”.

Detail.view.xml

<ObjectHeader
title=”{orders>DocNum}” >

make sure when you enter the variable, that {orders>DocNum}

special thanks to the following post that gave me the final piece (that app.controller.js)

http://scn.sap.com/thread/3785577

Thanks for reading,

Wow…  this one really burned through a lot of my time.  After many hours of trial and error and google digging, I finally found the trick that would read my service without errors.

Go to your web.xml file (this applies to eclipse) and scroll down until you find the following section:

<!– ============================================================== –>
<!– UI5 proxy servlet                                              –>
<!– ============================================================== –>

<servlet>
<servlet-name>SimpleProxyServlet</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>com.sap.ui5.proxy.SimpleProxyServlet</servlet-class>
<init-param>
<param-name>com.sap.ui5.proxy.REMOTE_LOCATION</param-name>
<param-value>http://<your url>:<port></param-value>
</init-param>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>SimpleProxyServlet</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>/proxy/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>

make sure your section looks exactly like the above, just change the blue text to be your sap server/port.

Thanks for reading,

Well, like always, I need to keep myself entertained by learning a new skill.  Well, this is pretty much all brand new, but I needed to understand UI5, and how I can start to use it on my own apps.  Because I’m already familiar with creating services, I thought this would be easy 🙂  Well, nothing is ever easy.

First, the cool parts.  UI5 gives me that responsive functionality that I really need.  Web Dynpro just can’t give it to you, and even designing an iOS application still requires you to design everything for different device sizes.  With UI5, not only can you have an app that adjusts to the particular device, but you can even add functionality based on certain devices (a common example would be to turn a button off unless it was a smart phone).

Now, my first major hurdle.  I’ve probably wasted around 8 hours on this…  still haven’t solved it.  I needed to vent, to so rest assured, when I figure it out, there will be another post 🙂  I was able to go through some tutorials, build an app with local data.  Cool, so I decided to replicate my current iOS application.  I got a lot of the framework done (still have a lot to learn, but it gave me the basics).  So I was ready to connect it to my service.  Looked easy enough… read some other blog posts, saw what to do…  nothing…  so far, I have found that at least part of my challenge revolves around CROS, which is a service that protects you from other systems calling your data unless you allow it.  Great…  but I WANT these 2 systems to talk.  I’ve tried lots of things…  I found something that at least got me to a new error 🙂

in Chrome, if I installed a plug-in “Allow-Control-Allow-Origins”, I got past the cross talk error.  But now I’ve moved onto a new error HTTP 405.  I have a headache, so I have to leave it alone for a while…  Talk about a strange way to spend vacation 🙂

thanks for reading,

Well, it’s that time of year, so I won’t be posting much for the next 10 days or so.  In the meantime, don’t waste your time poking around linked-in or reading work blogs.  Please take the next week or so to enjoy your family as much as possible.  If you are like me, the holidays are a chance to see friends and family that you don’t see that often.  So make the most of it…  even if your family can be a bit crazy (let’s face it, it’s what family is all about).

So Merry Christmas and Happy new year.