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LiveCycle v SAP NetWeaver

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Former Community Member
Forgive me for posting this one here. There doesn't appear to be a space for general LC queries. It's all product specific.



I work in the web team for an organisation that is essentially an SAP house. I know our SAP team is embarking on adopting NetWeaver but in the meantime we have business units asking for us to evaluate and adopt LiveCycle.



How similar are the two products? Can they exist together in the same environment or does one negate the need for the other ?



Cheers
10 Replies

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Level 9
The products are completely different. In a nutshell...

- SAP runs your business.

- LC does Form Processing and Workflow.

They do completely different things.



They are in fact very complementary, and Adobe and SAP have a very strong relationship, both at the business level and the technical level. SAP ship the Adobe Form Designer in NetWeaver, and also ship (and license you to use) a number of PDF form templates in as standard forms that you can use. However, if you want to develop your own forms, you will need some expertise in LiveCycle, and need to pay some additional licensing fees.



SAP is not known for its easy-to-use user-interfaces. The idea is that you can create a much more usable and familiar interface into the netweaver product by using an intelligent PDF form as the front-end to SAP backend processes.



Both SAP and Adobe have products called "Workflow", but they serve very different purposes - The Adobe Workflow product is really a fully fledged User-oriented Business Process Management system, whereas the SAP Workflow (as I understand it) is more a way of calling several BAPIs in a sequence.



I hope this helps...

Howard

http://www.avoka.com

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Former Community Member
The question maybe is more oriented to this:

http://www.adobe.com/enterprise/partners/sap.html



I am having the same case, we are migrating to NetWeaver, with NetWeaver we have the option of buying "Interactive Forms by Adobe" and we also are evaluating LC Forms with Reader Extensions, but we are not sure of the differences, reading the brochures it seems that they have the same features. I am sure there are differences, but what are they?



The thing is NetWeaver plus Interactive Forms or NetWaever with LC??

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Former Community Member
Hi, I have a related question, could someone kindly answer please.



We know one can have "Adobe Interactive Forms" with NetWeaver, the question is how do you use Adobe's PDF Forms in SAP's Workflow? How do you get these two things work together?



Is there a manual or documentation or some web page about that?



I asked SAP's training department, but they told me that they don't offer anything about that; they suggested me to ask Adobe. That's why I post the question here.



Thanks for help in advance.

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Former Community Member
HI

do we need any additional licence to use LC apart for that is provided with sap

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Former Community Member
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Former Community Member
Hi @all



Another related question.

I work with lifecycle for some time. Now I need to make a document, that, when the user fills out some fields, should validate it with some data in sap.



NetWeaver can do that as far as I know, but it seems to be more complicated to build a form itself. (For me it would be an easy thing if I could implement the data in my document.)

So, can I make events which will provide my LC document automatically with data out of a sap port? Does it require any specific licenses?



Thanx already

Lisa

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Former Community Member

Hi Lisa,

There are two main ways you can achieve this:

1. Populate the data in the form during the generation from SAP. This is done by building an interface and form (using transaction SFP), then populating the data of the interface via a program in SAP on form generation. These data fields can then be used in your document as you have mentioned.

2. On initialisation or some other event call a web service that will populate the data from SAP. This is done by creating a web service in SAP (usually based on a remote function module). The wsdl file from this service is used to create a data connection in your document (it must have reader rights i.e. it has been generated from SAP).

The first option is simpler to implement and does not require the user to be online. The second option gives the benefit of providing current and up to date data. So there are obvious pros and cons for each method and the one(s) you choose depend on your requirements.

Regarding SAP licensing, because this is an interactive and not just for output, there will be licensing implications. You will need to contact your SAP sales or account exec for the details on that one but often SAP customers have up to 5 interactive form developments included in their licensing.

Hope this helps,

Let me know if you have any further questions about these.

Regards,

Ben.

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Level 2

The original post here was years ago.  Can anyone provide a current status of the Adobe LiveCycle and SAP Netweaver relationship?  How are the Adobe LiveCycle components included with SAP licensed compared to buying  LC Forms, LC Process Management seperately? What about other LC prduct LC RM, LC RE, LC DS etc. I hear mixed stories, SAP limits the use of the form to their pre-defined templates etc, but would like to know the facts.  I know how the Adobe products are licnesed, so maybe you can provide some backgorund on the SAP licenses.

Thanks Steve

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Level 1

Steve,

SAP and Adobe continue to have a strategic alliance around the Adobe Interactive Forms product. The product that SAP bundles into their NetWeaver platform is called SAP Interactive Forms bY Adobe. It does not completely match up 1:1 to the LC modules but does include core capabilities for LC Forms, LC Output, LC RE and LC Digital Signitures. SAP does not license Process management, Rights management or PDFG.

I cannot speak with complete confidence at how SAP offers the product but I believe that IFbA is licnsed by SAP to their customers with some forms and templates being included in a customers base product license and a IFbA license being required for additions and customizations for interactive forms. I believe that non interactive PDF output (i.e. print forms) does not require an incremental license.

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Level 1

Hi Dave, is there any updates on this topic?

Is this partnership still active? I realize your response above soon are 3 yrs old.. How does this fit in with AEM Forms?

Where can i find info on which versions of LC ES that is bundled with SAP?

regards

Hannes