- SAP Managed Tags
"We’ve always defined ourselves by the ability to overcome the impossible." (Movie: Interstellar, 2014)
Here we are again, with the next step in the evolution of ABAP.
ABAP Cloud
It’s been six years since SAP launched the so-called SAP Cloud Platform ABAP Environment, which allowed developers to build and run ABAP code in the cloud. Now called SAP BTP ABAP Environment, it is the SAP Platform-as-a-Service offering that enables developers to leverage their traditional ABAP skills to build and run ABAP applications in the cloud on SAP BTP, either as an extension to SAP S/4HANA (any edition) or as standalone applications. With the SAP BTP ABAP environment, we are targeting business application developers who have extensive SAP experience and domain knowledge, particularly around SAP ERP solutions. See Steampunk is going all-in and and It's Steampunk now, to read about it’s history.
Derived from this, something ingenious was introduced: The ABAP Cloud development model. ABAP Cloud is a perfect example of how innovation works. The story of ABAP Cloud began quite silent. In fact, ABAP Cloud was born in the SAP BTP ABAP environment, where it’s the leading and only development model available for ABAP development. It’s the amazing result of the ABAP engineering team, which has evolved ABAP into ABAP Cloud, making it future-proof, upgrade-stable and, you could say, cloud native.
With the ABAP Cloud development model, you can build cloud-ready and upgrade-stable business applications, services, and extensions. ABAP Cloud was introduced in the BTP ABAP environment, but like any other innovation success story, ABAP Cloud has expanded its home turf, it has grown in both scope and availability.
That’s how the idea was born to make ABAP Cloud available everywhere.
The result is that ABAP Cloud is already the underlying ABAP development model in SAP BTP ABAP environment and in S/4HANA Cloud, public edition as of 2208 (3 system landscape required). Additionally, it can be used in S/4HANA Cloud, private edition as well as in S/4HANA any premise from >2022. We highly recommend using ABAP Cloud already for your S/4HANA private cloud as well as S/4HANA on premise projects to set the guardrails to reach a clean core and preparing your cloud journey.
Picture 1: ABAP Cloud Availability
SAP Build
Back to the opening statement: the next step in ABAP’s evolution. ABAP Cloud is now part of SAP Build! This is the amazing success story of how true integration works. How technology can overcome the borders of more than 40 years of evolutionary history. For more details on this great enhancement, read this technical blog post by Michael Ameling.
But what happens when the paths of SAP Build and ABAP Cloud cross to form the world’s strongest alliance for customer and partner development in the SAP ecosystem? What does this mean for you, our developer community?
With SAP Build, you can accelerate your ERP modernization, foster innovation and automate processes, all within a single comprehensive suite of extension development tools that includes low-code, pro-code and generative AI capabilities.
SAP Build provides you the flexibility to create and extend applications, automate processes and design digital workspaces with low-code, pro-code and generative AI tools. Its collaborative design allows diverse teams to build solutions faster using pre-built solutions, AI assistance, and seamless integration with SAP applications.
It has never been easier from a developer’s perspective, since SAP Build provides you all the tools you need in one place, so you can focus on the real development to be done. The SAP Build Lobby is the starting point for your Java/JavaScript projects and your ABAP Cloud projects.
Picture 2: SAP Build Lobby
Our goal is to provide you with a seamless development flow, regardless of the environment you’re working in most of the time. Examples of this integration include
- The tool bridge between the ABAP Development Tools for Eclipse (ADT) and SAP Business Application Studio: The tool bridge connects ADT and BAS, which connects the front-end with the back-end development. It keeps the context of the services and entities as input for the Fiori generator.
- The SAP Build Lobby as a single-entry point : You can start your ABAP development project from the lobby next to other build extension development options. You can access a list of ABAP systems directly from the lobby and keep a project reference to the ABAP system and development package.
- The Graphical Modeler for ABAP: You can reuse CAP project models to generate ABAP Core Data Services (ABAP CDS) from it.
In addition to all the benefits mentioned, it doesn’t matter if you’re building on-stack extensions in S/4HANA Cloud or side-by-side extensions on SAP BTP: SAP Build is the umbrella.
Picture 3: Extensibility Portfolio for S/4HANA public cloud edition
And this is only the beginning: We aim to integrate developer tools and capabilities into a seamless user centered offering and provide a clear developer tools strategy, so you can start building your SAP projects right away. Including ABAP Cloud in SAP Build is a testament to you as an ABAP Cloud developer. Your skills are more than important and strategic in the SAP application development and automation portfolio.
That is already exciting. And we haven’t even covered Joule’s capabilities in detail so far in this blog post.
We aim to increase the developer efficiency across the entire development lifecycle through generative AI and Joule embedded in all our IDEs and tools. Stay tuned for more news to come, especially on GenAI.
Resources
learn more about the topic:
- Public Roadmap for SAP BTP, ABAP Environment
- ABAP Cloud - Technical use cases and recommended technologies
- Practicing Clean Core Extensibility For SAP S/4HANA Cloud
- SAP Certified Associate - Back-End Developer - ABAP Cloud
- Extend SAP S/4HANA in the cloud and on premise with ABAP based extensions
- ABAP Cloud FAQ
- Building Low Code Extensions with Key User Extensibility in SAP S/4HANA and SAP Build
- Extend SAP S/4HANA with SAP Build
- Clean core extensibility for SAP S/4HANA Cloud
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