Sage ERP Accpac 6.0A is just entering beta. With this release you will be able start to run Web based User Interface forms. But as a developer, how do you create new Web Based forms using the Accpac SDK? The new Web based forms are written using a number of tools that are integrated into the Eclipse development environment (http://www.eclipse.org/). This SDK involves programming with the Sage Web Toolkit (SWT) which is based on the Google Web Toolkit (GWT – http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/). With this toolkit you develop your programs in Java and then GWT provides a compiler that will compile these programs into JavaScript, which will run in your browser.

You begin by using the project wizard integrated into Eclipse. You use this to create a starting Accpac screen project. From the File menu in Eclipse you choose File – New – Project… Then select under “Sage Web Toolkit,” “New SWT UI.” When you are done and click Finish, and the wizard will create a new project in Eclipse.

This is a completely ready to run minimal UI that is all set for you to add your own logic to. If you don’t do anything and just choose run, then your project will be run in GWT hosted mode which means it is run as a Java program in a container that simulate browser behavior. This is how you debug your programs. In this mode you can set breakpoints, single step through code, examine variables and do anything else supported by the full Java debugger.

Then when you sign-on, you get the screen with the single table control connected to the A/R customers SData feed on the form. Normally you would delete this control and then add the controls you really want on your form. Behind the scenes is the development shell that show useful messages on what is going on, especially if something goes wrong. Plus status messages are sent to the Java Console inside the Eclipse IDE. Once you have debugged the program and have it working then you run the project through the GWT compiler to produce a Web HTML/JavaScript version of the program that you can run directly in the Browser, or which you can add to the Accpac Portal.

When you are writing code for your UI, it can go into one of two places. If can reside on the Browser side of things running as JavaScript or it can run on the server side as an SData service. In VB all the UI code was within the VB OCX control and this talked directly to the Accpac Views (Business Logic Objects). In the Web world we have JavaScript running in the Browser (created by compiling Java programs with GWT), that talk to SData services running on the Server. These SData services then talk to the Accpac Views.

Thanks Stephen Smith for this great information!