What all things we require to develop a web channel application?
Here are the rough steps you need to do
1) You need a NWDI which operates as versioning control system (server) - it's similar to CVS, Subversion, Perforce, etce.
2) Then you create within the NWDI a developer track and define all Software Components (SAP WCEM), which you like to modify
3) Because the previous step was just the metadata definition, you need to download from SAP all required SCA files and import them within the NWDI to your developer Track
4) After the import, you need a NDWS - which is the Eclipse Java IDE with some SAP specific plugins. You connect your NWDS to the NWDI using the developer user account, that was created for you on the NWDI. Download/import the developer track configuration.
5) Again, you just have the definition downloaded. Now you can select the individual DCs and create local eclipse projects to modify those (read the extension guide, of how to create your own modules / extending SAP modules using your own namespace)
6) To be able Test your application, you need a J2EE Server. The best case is to have a local J2EE Server installed and configured (The J2EE & NWDS together is called NWDW - NetWeaver Developer Workstation)
7) Within the NWDS you can define the connection to the your local J2EE, so that you can directly deploy the individual modules directly to the J2EE
To sum it up
- NWDI
- NDWS
- J2EE Server
- A backend to connect (ERP or CRM)
- A catalog engine (MDM or Trex)
- The SCA Files (specific for WCEM and for the general NW 7.3x java stack)
What technologies it involves?
- JSF 2
- CSS3 / HTML5
- JavaScript
- Velocity (for generating the HTML)
- GenIL and a another Search Framework (SAP specific for backend interactions)
- OData (for Web-Services) using ATOM or JSON as output
- Ajax
- ... and many more
How to Debug these applications?
You connect your NWDS to the J2EE Server (local or remote) after you enabled the debugging feature on the server. Anything is like classic debugging for Java code. XHTML files of JSF itself you cannot debug, but you have the parameter wec-debug=true, which you can add to the URL to see some more debug output.
What are the configurations, setup file and plugin's required to get started with WCEM development?
You find everything in the installation & extension guide for WCEM, that you get from the sap service market place. For your NWDS installation you have additional WCEM plugins, which you must install manually using the installation tool integrated to Eclipse. You find the instructions in the installation guide as i remember, but do not forget to manually install/import the SAP certificates within your Internet Explorer otherwise the installation-tool will fail
Hope that helps