Ideas For Final Year Project

[Former Member]

Hi everyone, I'm new here. In fact this is my first ever post in the SDN coummunity. I'm studying BIS and majoring in knowledge management. I'm also very very interested in enterprise 2.0

I started learning about SAP 4 months ago and since then I've been hooked. I don't know much and I'm not an expert like you all but I'm absolutely willing to learn, learn and learn some more.

I'll be starting my FYP soon and I was thinking of doing it using SAP/ABAP since I'm preparing to get certified and to have a career in an SAP related field after I graduate anyway.

Any ideas please? This lost ambitious soul would appreciate your help. Is it possible to do something not too complicated related to knowledge management or enterprise 2.0 with ABAP?

SAP is available in my university computer labs.

Thank you all in advance and my apologies if I'm posting this in the wrong place.

[Former Member]

Hi Amir,

Welcome to the wide world of SAP. It's good to see your early interest, especially at a college level. Do they teach SAP courses at your school? What gets a student like yourself interested in SAP/ABAP?

Regarding your project, what kind of requirements are there? Is there any reason you mention KM and Enterprise 2.0 specifically? What do you have in mind so far?

-ewH

[Former Member]

Hi Edward. For a while I was starting to think nobody was going to reply.

SAP is indeed a huge and wide world. That's what makes it both interesting and challenging. We do get taught a basic course in ABAP at my university but that's about it. I'll be enrolling in it next semester. By the end of this year, I'll be hopefully sitting for an SAP certification. Meanwhile I'm reading a lot on SAP and also doing my 8 months internship in Alcatel-Lucent. My tasks are more business oriented rather than technical (something I'm glad about).

Why did I develop an interest in SAP? Well, since I was a little kid, I've always loved LEGOS. It seems like there are tons of SAP components and pieces that can be utilized in creative ways to solve problems and make business organization more efficient and effective. It all depends on how well the business process is analyzed, then adjusted to SAP's best practices and finally how the SAP components/modules (aka LEGOS in Amir's vocabulary) are put together.

I also have a deep interest in the application of technologies that facilitate creation of communities, better knowledge exchange and collaboration. I'm not that much interested in the technical aspects of the technologies themselves, since I don't really consider myself to be a programmer but rather their application. As for Enterprise 2.0, it's the next generation of KM tools and that's why I mentioned them together. Maybe KM 2.0 is a better term. Eh, poteto potato, tometo, tomato.

I don't have something solid in mind and there are some limitations. The SAP system in my campus isn't dynamic like how a real company's sytem would be. Plus I'm not sure how ABAP could be used to make applications within SAP. From my humble experience so far, it's mainly for report generation, kind of like how VBA and Macro aid in producing reports with Excel files.

What are ABAP's capabilities? I'm interested in making something like Blogtronix:

http://www.blogtronix.com/

Sorry about the long rant.

By the way, nice work on the Wii thingy. I read about it on Vedorprisey. Small cyber world huh? I LOVE the blogosphere

[stephenjohannes]

Amir,

After seeing your replay to Edward, I decided to reply, because your original question was pretty open ended. As far as projects go, you can probably do anything with the Netweaver stack, as long as you don't need to write assembler to perform the operation. ABAP is a lot more powerful than reporting. In fact the core ERP system was written in ABAP. That system is how SAP made their bread and butter money before evovling into other solutions.

You could probably do something like blogtronix in WebDynpro for ABAP or even BSP. It would be just a matter of how much time you want to spend. A buddy of mine always joked about building fantasy sports sites using an ABAP system. Usually with an SAP system your limits are time, resources, and whatever you impose on yourself.

Good luck,

Stephen

[Former Member]

Thanks for that Stephen, and ya I guess I could have written a more precise question from the start. My bad!

Your answer provides a better sense of direction. I'm downloading SAP NetWeaver 04s SP11 right now from this <a href="https://www.sdn.sap.comhttp://www.sdn.sap.comhttp://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/downloaditem?rid=/library/uuid/cfc19866-0401-0010-35b2-dc8158247fb6">link</a>.

I'm going to explore it and see what I can do with it.

By the way what's BSP?

Cheers!

[thomas_jung]

>By the way what's BSP

Well the TLA stands for Business Server Pages. Think of it as JSP only implemented in the ABAP language and workbench. It has its own Blog area, forum and Wiki space here on SDN.

[Former Member]

Okay so I did some reading on BSP and WDA and I think I'm going to get deeper into WDA. I'll probably make a simple blogging system like wordpress but based on ABAP. If time allows I'll include a little bit of social networking features. That's the plan. I've got lots of reading to do and many hours of practice to spend. The FYP lasts for one year!

Thank you all for your help. SDN is an excellent place. Moreover the SAP Library has so much useful info.

[Former Member]

Amir,

That sounds like a good plan. Maybe once you get your alpha version done for your project, you can release the code on SDN. Others may find it useful, and surely it will give you good experience to work on an open source project. Just a thought...

Good luck,

ewH

[Former Member]

Okay excuse me for this dumb question but how the hell am I supposed to award points? Radio buttons? Where?

Oh ya and I'll defintely love to share the code. I've got a whole year to get started. It should be fun. Sharing is caring.

[Former Member]

I'm not 100% sure, but I think they may have disabled points on this forum, as it is more for just casual discussion.

-ewH

[Former Member]

I guess you're right since I can't manage to find any radio buttons at all. Oh well...

Thanks anyways. C ya around! Cheers!