SAP Extension Suite (discontinued) vs. VisualCron

The adoption of SAP Extension Suite is growing significantly and it has become a strategic platform for our company. SAP Extension Suite will most likely meet the requirements of most companies to get beyond small workgroup apps and tackle more strategic requirements. The most important thing that SAP Extension delivers is a single UI for development effort for web and mobile deployment.

Incentivized

VisualCron does accommodate continuous file processing. Like packing and unpacking compressed files, splitting or merging files, sending E-mail's and executing queries on databases. VisualCron in less suitable for performing very complex operations on files like, arithmetic with numbers, dates or amounts. Very complex job scripts become cluttered. Debugging Job scripts is not easy.

Incentivized

• Reduces the length and cost of system development and integration
• Empowers developers to acquire a new skill to deliver applications and other services efficiently
• Enabled the innovation team to transform the way services are accessed and delivered
• Ensures scalability of apps used simultaneously by thousands of customers

Incentivized

• VisualCron can pack and unpack files from many types of packing methods.
• Clear job scripts with complex constructions can be written in VisualCron
• VisualCron provides a clear graphical overview of the situation of all jobs.
• VisualCron clearly indicates when a job has run into an error.

Incentivized

• It was a bit of a hassle to configure at first but once setup it's easy and fast.
• At a certain time they removed key items used in pipelines to force upgrades.
• The new UI though works well feels less intuitive than the previous one.

Incentivized

• VisualCron should more specifically indicate the root cause of an error.
• If copying a file goes wrong, VisualCron reports 'can't copy file'. I expect 'no read permissions from original' or 'no write permissions from destination'.
• VisualCron offers no way to execute a Job script line by line
• In VisualCron, nested loops cannot be created.

Incentivized

Questions and problems can be addressed to VisualCron 's support department via E-mail. I usually get a good answer from them fairly quickly. There is also a VisualCron forum where you can ask questions that will be answered by other VisualCron users.

Incentivized

We have been able to work in a much more agile way with SAP Extension Suite, and there is a lot of excitement that developing with this platform is significantly faster. SAP Extension Suite is the perfect fit to build great-looking applications that work on any form factor, be it [a] smartphone, laptop, or tablet, and within budget.

Incentivized

For simple processes, VisualCron is easier to use and maintain. For complicated processes, Quadient Inspire offers more options. The graphical representations of waiting, running or completed jobs is adequate for both products. The logging of job actions is better in Quadient Inpire as in VisualCron.

Incentivized

• Faster development cycle due to native integration with SAP products
• Negative short-term ROI due to the lack of training material and significant differences with the previous version of the same tool (SAP Web IDE)
• Tighter integration with corporate programming guidelines since SAP Extension Suite offers great integration with DevOps pipeline solutions

Incentivized

• With VisualCron, I need 3 times less time to get file processing right.
• If a VisualCron job goes wrong I need twice as much time to find the problem.
• Visualcron does not run on Linux but on Windows which can make an upgrade and reboot take up to 6 times as long.

Incentivized