Many Developers On One Central Server

[Former Member]

Hi all,

I've read <a href="https://weblogs.sdn.sap.com/pub/u/266">Thomas Weiss</a>'s weblog: <a href="/people/thomas.weiss/blog/2007/04/01/abap-trial-version-for-newbies-part-4--many-developers-on-one-central-server--how-does-it-work Developers On One Central Server - How Does It Work</a>.

I posted a question there, but apparently Thomas can't answer at the moment, and since I'm impatient for getting someone's opinion, I reckon we can discuss that topic here :^)

I see the advantage of the ABAP development approach (i.e. the code is kept on the central server), as far as the source code is developed on the programmers' local PCs and <i>not updated for weeks</i>.

I wonder whether the centralized development still results is an effective advantage when compared to a development process where a versioning system is used - e.g. <a href="http://www.nongnu.org/cvs/">CVS</a> or <a href="http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/aa718670.aspx">SourceSafe</a>.

In fact any significantly complex development project takes advantage of such tools, and this paradigm is used in NetWeaver Java development.

The benefit would be that the developer doesn't need to be connected to the applications server with a high bandwith network connection.

But what are the major drawbacks of this second approach in your opinion?

Cheers, Davide

[Former Member]

Hi David,

Here are my 0.02$.

From what i feel, SAP is a pretty closed package till recent times(Till the advent of bapi's and IDocs and now the newtweavers) and abap was something that very specific for business applications only.

The ABAP editor came with features like saving, activating which would need the system to save the code to a database in turn.

Sap did not support any external vendors to create an external editor for ABAP for if any such editor existed(Nor did it create an editor on its own), it would have to let them connect to the SAP system to upload the code, whch they did not want to.

Regards,

ravi