Architecture of the Enhancement Technique

In order to enhance a program, you must first define a Business Add-In. The application developer creates an interface for the add-in. From this, enhancement management creates an adapter class that implements the interface and thus provides the interface for implementation by the customer, partner, and so on. The developer then creates an instance of the adapter class in the application program and calls the corresponding method at the appropriate time.

For each Business Add-In you have one interface and an adapter class that implements this. The interface is implemented by the user.

The generated class (Add-In adapter) has the following tasks:
· Control

The adapter class calls the active implementations.
1. · Filtering
If a Business Add-In is to be executed only under certain conditions, the adapter class ensures that only certain implementations will be executed.

This concept ensures mutlple use. Any Business Add-In that has been implemented once already can be implemented again by those groups listed to the right of the software chain shown in the above graphic.

Customers can find the enhancements in their system in the Implementation Guide (IMG) and in the component hierarchy. If a customer wishes to use a Business Add-In, he or she first creates an implementation. The customer must implement the methods and the enhancements, and afterwards activate the implementation of the enhancement. The enhancement's active components are then called at runtime. Normally, a Business Add-In contains an interface and other additional components such as function codes for menu enhancements. In some cases, Business Add-Ins also include enhancements for screens. The enhancement, interface, and generated classes are all located in the appropriate application development namespace. Business Add-In implementations are created in the respective implementation namespace.