SAP Wisdom : Smart forms Vs. Adobe forms
Updated: Feb 22, 2022
What triggered this thought ?
Recently we helped a client move from Smart forms to Adobe forms.
Which one is better ? Why ?
One of the biggest problem our clients have with Smart forms is that it does not have version management. Meaning, if after moving any smart form change to production the users realize that something is not working as expected then the amount of coding effort to roll back the changes is the same as what it would take to make the whole change again.
Number | Element | Smart forms | Adobe forms |
1 | Development effort over the lifecycle of form | Effort needed for layout creation and changes is much higher | Lower effort for Layout creation and changes |
2 | Performance | Lower performance issues as it is offered out of box by SAP | Heavy in terms of resource demands as it requires ADS setup which can consume more resources |
3 | Architecture | No additional calls to any external server | Webservice calls are needed to ADS which makes this require higher upkeep from maintenance perspective |
4 | Time and effort to fix production issues | It is more difficult overall to solve production issues with smartforms because of the lack of version management feature | Version management makes rolling back changes as easy flipping a switch . Very light on coding efforts |
We recommend our clients to use Adobe forms over Smart forms
That is the reason why we advised our client to move from Smart forms to Adobe forms. Version management makes the process of change roll back hassle free and avoids unnecessary coding efforts.
Stay tuned
We will give many such insightful nuggets of information to our readers . This advise can be really useful in the hands of IT decision makers like Director of IT or CIOs to help save them IT Costs.