Joule speaks ABAP!

[AlexanderRother]

Did you ever learn a new language? Then you know how much training and practical experience is required to know the grammar, learn the vocabulary and become fluent. Joule has mastered this journey now and finally is able to speak ABAP! 😊

 

 

Introduction

“At SAP, the most valuable language is ABAP” – Jensen Huang, Founder and CEO of NVIDIA (Sapphire Key Note 2024).

ABAP is SAP’s proprietary programming language and ABAP technology is the solid foundation for both the classic ERP and SAP’s flagship ERP SAP S/4HANA Cloud. Bundled with our strong ABAP development community, the impact and the value of generative AI support for ABAP is obvious. Consequently, SAP decided to invest heavily in the development of Joule skills as well as training and fine-tuning large language models specifically for ABAP.

Now – more than one year of investment after the initial announcement at SAP TechEd 2023, and the refresher end of 2024, we are super happy and proud to announce the general availability of our Joule copilot for ABAP developers in ABAP Development Tools for Eclipse as well as the ABAP AI SDK powered by the Intelligent Scenario Lifecycle Management!

Overview over ABAP AI use cases

Our use cases can be grouped into three categories.

Accelerate: Comprises all Joule skills which make ABAP developers more efficient. Besides the Joule integration in ABAP Development Tools itself, the first scope of skills comprises Predictive Code Completion, Unit Test generation for ABAP classes and CDS Views as well as ABAP and CDS code explanation.

Example for Joule's ABAP CDS Explain skill

Empower: We empower ABAP developers to infuse AI capabilities into their solutions and extensions. The ABAP AI SDK powered by the Intelligent Scenario Lifecycle Management (ISLM) is an easy-to-consume ABAP client providing full access to the SAP BTP Generative AI Hub.

Transform: The transformation of customer and partner code from the classic ERP towards SAP S/4HANA and further towards a clean core is one of the major challenges for many of our customers. We will assist with generative AI in this endeavor starting later in 2025.

In this blog post we are now concentrating on the Accelerate and the Empower use case. Further information on the Transform use case will follow later in 2025.

Accelerate your ABAP development

Which products are supported?

Joule’s ABAP skills are available in:

• SAP BTP ABAP Environment
• SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition
• SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition as of release 2025.

Supporting lower releases of SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition is currently in evaluation.

Get started for free!

License: In order to leverage Joule’s capabilities, you need to purchase an additional license:

• for customers the required material is 8019124 – Joule for developers limited promotion, ABAP. This license is a limited promotion free of charge until September 15th 2025 and can be purchased until August 15th 2025.
• for partners, the corresponding material is 8019541 - Cloud test, demo, and development for Joule for developers, ABAP AI capabilities. This material can be purchased via the Manage My Services app until June 15, 2025 and grants access to Joule's capabilities free of charge until September 15th, 2025. Find details in the SAP Partner Portal.

Please also check SAP Note 3571857 for details. The future commercial model is currently in finalization, updates will follow.

Architecture and Set-Up: The architecture follows the general guiding principles of all Joule capabilities at SAP.

High-level overview over Joule.

 All requests to large language models are routed from ABAP to the AI foundation on SAP BTP. The use cases in the Accelerate category are managed by SAP. Once the subscription explained above is in place, the configuration part in your system is done automatically by SAP. Finally, update your ABAP Development Tools for Eclipse to the latest version to get the Joule integration in the IDE. Developers who shall be allowed to use Joule need the respective authorizations as explained in the documentation.

Learn how to use Joule

Explore Joule’s new ABAP skills by working through our tutorial on github. For details on specific features, check out our documentation.

You wonder what could be the technical foundation in ABAP to integrate Joule in ABAP Development Tools and offer all Joule skills for ABAP developers? It is the ABAP AI SDK powered by ISLM, the main deliverable of the Empower use case. And the good news is, we offer the entire ABAP AI SDK functionality to you as well, to realize your own AI use cases! Continue reading the next section for the details.

 

You are empowered!

With the ABAP AI SDK powered by ISLM we empower you to infuse AI capabilities into your own custom applications and solutions. This way you benefit from the same comfort as SAP for realizing AI use cases in ABAP.

Which products are supported?

The ABAP AI SDK powered by ISLM is available in:

• SAP BTP ABAP Environment 
• SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 
• SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition and OnPrem as of release 2025 via standard delivery. Lower releases of SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition and OnPrem are supported via Transport-based Correction Instructions (TCI), see details in SAP Note 3513374 and the SAP Notes and instructions linked therein.

Get started!

License: The AI capabilities of SAP BTP are offered through the SAP AI Core service. Customers need to have their own instance of SAP AI Core to be used from ABAP via the ABAP AI SDK. There is no separate license or pricing from ABAP perspective, the entire licensing and pricing is according to the SAP AI Core service.

Architecture and Set-Up: The architecture follows the general guiding principles of all Joule capabilities at SAP. All requests to large language models are routed from ABAP to the AI foundation on SAP BTP. For Empower use case, an own instance of SAP AI Core needs to be used and the communication between the ABAP system and this instance needs to be configured. Finally the AI scenarios are managed by the ISLM. Find all details for the ABAP AI SDK with step-by-step instructions in the documentation. For details on the ISLM, please see the list of references given below.

 

Find more information

This is a summary of important sources of further information. More details will follow and will be published and linked here. Please

• Keep track of ongoing developments and news by following our SAP community.
• Make use of our FAQ page for generative AI for ABAP to get many frequent questions answered. The FAQ will be updated regularly.
• Consult the SAP Help documentation for details regarding all features.
• Find the region mapping between SAP BTP ABAP Environment and SAP AI Core in SAP Note 3566760.
• Watch the recordings of Devtoberfest and the SAP BTP ABAP Environment Roundtable #19 for demos of the initial scope.
• Check out the ISLM documentation (or this version for SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition) for more information on the Intelligent Scenario Lifecycle Management.
  Visit the ISLM community page for further guidance and watch the corresponding Devtoberfest session.
• Read the story of John the developer and get a first impression in this video.

 

Roadmap

After the initial delivery, more features and skills will follow in upcoming releases. See our roadmap to know what’s already in the planning.

With that, the only thing left to say is: Have fun talking ABAP with Joule! 😊

[BjörnS]

"Hey Joule, I need some Unit Tests for my Open Source Projects" 😅

Thank you @AlexanderRother for the Informations, we will try it.

[JoseBastidas]

SAP Partners; register to our upcoming webinar SAP BTP Partner Community Live – Ask Me Anything on ABAP Development with Joule, our generative AI copilot:

https://partneredge.sap.com/en/library/education/psd/2025/jan/e_oe_te_w_PSD_WEB_00008933.html

Regards,

Jose

[Murali_Shanmugham]

Thanks for bringing this to us. Great work!

[AKJaman]

Very Informative Alex..Thanks for sharing

[Chad_He]

What should we prepare for using Joule for ABAP in S/4HANA 2025 OnPrem?
Do we need BTP ABAP Platform for that?

SAP S/4HANA 

[CarlosBecar]

Excellent, I want to try it but from what I read it is only available for customers and partners through a license, it is not available for freelance developers by other means.

Will it be available for BTP Trial or Free tier?

[ringofchaos]

As of now it does not work with BTP Trial account for ABAP development.

Its a shame, as github copilot already works with abap and eclipse without need for complicated licenses. The autocomplete works with abap with github copilot but it is not aware of context and code in related objects so it is limited.

I hope Joule can mitigate that, but as we know SAP moves slow, so it would be a while when developers will have access to it for learning

[AlexanderRother]

Hi @CarlosBecar and @ringofchaos ,

thanks for the feedback and bringing this up. Once we have more news, this blog post will be updated.

Hi @Chad_He ,

thanks for asking. Our delivery targets the products listed in the post above. You can see that the ABAP AI SDK is already available for OnPrem. In case there are further news, this blog post will be updated.

[C-Dawg]

Thanks for sharing @AlexanderRother. But documentation does not apply for my 2023 On Premise System, because the Apps "Communication System" and "Communication Arrangement" don't exist. Neither the SAP Note 3513374 helped me getting these Apps. So am I missing something or is there any new ABAP AI SDK documentation incoming for lower Onprem/Private Release? Because it is stated: "Lower releases of SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition and OnPrem are supported via Transport-based Correction Instructions (TCI)"

Thanks in advanced.

Wang

[AlexanderRother]

Hi @C-Dawg ,

this question is related to the SDK. This is needs to be configured manually using the ISLM. The link to the corresponding documentation is in the "Find more information" section of the blog post, or here for convenience.

Best regards,
Alexander

[TomasG]

Hello SAP team, would it be worth creating a Developer Tutorial on how to set up and check all dependencies when implementing Joule in Eclipse for both private and public cloud ABAP development? Gathering information from various sources on what needs to be activated seems necessary. For example, on our internal partner demo public cloud system connected to ABAP dev, we ended up with a message in Eclipse saying that no system is relevant for Joule. Many thanks for checking.

[AlexanderRother]

Hi @TomasG , thanks for the feedback, we will check. Note that in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition it will be working as of release 2025, as explained in the post above. Details for this will follow with the release.

Best regards,
Alexander

[Vadim_N]

Hello SAP team.

Is it correct that if I use SAP BTP Trial account, Joule will be available next month?

[AlexanderRother]

HI @Vadim_N ,

thanks for the question. At the moment it is available for productive accounts with the material explained in the blog post above. We are exploring opportunities regarding free tier and trial accounts.

Best regards,
Alexander

[jungwoo_han]

Hi Alex,

I have a question about Joule on BTP ABAP Env(2502).

As image below, when clicking Joule button,  message show “No open project that supports Joule”.

(Of course, my Eclipse ADT is also updated to the latest version.)

Is it desired message? Since Joule chat is not available at the moment as you mentioned in latest blog, so I understand that.

[Vadim_N]

Hello @AlexanderRother 

Thank you for the response.

I appreciate the opportunity if I will be able to try Joule even in test BTP environment as I don't have appropriate project for now

Best regards,
Vadim

[JPT]

Hello @AlexanderRother 

According to Note 3571857 we, as a sap partner should get in touch with TDD@sap.com for acquiring the additional licence 8019124. But we got this answer:

8019124 - Joule for developer limited promotion, ABAP - Due to technical issues Joule is currently not available for ordering under TDD. We expect these technical issues to be resolved soon but cannot commit to a specific timeline.

Please look out for any news published on the TDD AI Info page.

Is there any info when this is available for partners? Next weeks/Months? Bc this service is only available until september.

Greetings
Jan

[karl_kessler]

We are working on the TDD issue with high prio.
Please stay tuned. We will communicate as soon as it becomes available.

[StephanHeinberg]

Sad news, that Joule’s ABAP skills are not supported for S/4HANA OnPrem!

Alternatives:

• GitHub Copilot | Eclipse Plugin
• ABAP-AI · GitHub

[SumiKang]

Hi team, Is there any roadmap for Build code code generation for ABAP?

[JPT]

@karl_kessler any news on this? is it possible now?

[karl_kessler]

8019541 | Cloud test, demo, and development for Joule for developers, ABAP AI capabilities
is available now. See Joule for developers, ABAP AI capabilities section on PartnerEdge for more details.

[Piotr-Kubisz]

@karl_kessler I can see this position in SAP Partner Pricing App, and we've met the prerequisites by using Pay-As-You-Go license for partners.

However, when I click Add service button in Manage My Services app, the "Cloud test, demo, and development for Joule for developers, ABAP AI capabilities" is not on the list of available licenses.

Is there any additional step required to be able to see it?

[karl_kessler]

@Piotr-Kubisz 
Please be aware that TDD ABAP AI license (8019541) is modeled as an add-on to one of the following materials:

• 8012331 | cloud test, demo, and development for S/4HANA Cloud PE, 1 System OR
• 8017424 | cloud test, demo, and development for S/4HANA Cloud, 3 System OR
• 8006364 | SCP ABAP, Runtime for Partners OR
• 8006365 | SCP ABAP, Persistence for Partners OR
• 8009282 | Pay-As-You-Go for SAP BTP for cloud test, demo, and development.

Here is an example for 8009282 | Pay-As-You-Go for SAP BTP for cloud test, demo, and development

Step1: Pick PAYG

Step2: Add ABAP AI

[Piotr-Kubisz]

Thanks Karl! That helped.

[madhu_M]

@AlexanderRother  Thanks for sharing this, We have enabled this feature however in eclipse i get below error - 

ADT version is latest one . 

[Hiroya_Kita]

@karl_kessler I'm partner of SAP and using S/4HANA public Cloud in TDD. As metioned in Note 3571857, I have purchased the license "8019541 | Cloud test, demo, and development for Joule for developers, ABAP AI capabilities" and it is active. I submitted a service request through SAP for Me following Note3571857. However, it was rejected. Upon checking the Service Description, it states, "The service can only be applied successfully after purchasing the corresponding license, i.e. 8019124 - Joule for Developer limited promotion, ABAP." How can I enable the service correctly?

[karl_kessler]

@Hiroya_Kita Thanks for the heads-up. I informed the team accordingly and will let you know asap.

[monicaang]

Same here. License there and activated for TDD S4HANA Public Cloud. Eclipse newest version. Same message in Eclipse

[Basant_Joshi]

Hi @AlexanderRother 

I am using my sap trial account and want to use joule ( LATEST VERSION OF ECLIPSE ) ,

I think it will not work on trial , 

I have some discoveries like

First we need a partner account and need to buy the license

​I have read the comment section and am now confused about what to do. If anyone has solved this issue, could you please direct me to the steps required to start Joule in my Eclipse? It would be very helpful.

I have some license number what to use ?  

8019124 and 8019541 

Regards,

Basant 

[Basant_Joshi]

@Hiroya_Kita Have to find any solution ? 

[AlexanderRother]

Hi @Basant_Joshi 

currently, Joule is not available in BTP Trial. If you have a productive instance of SAP BTP ABAP Environment or correspondingly SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, you can purchase (for free) the corresponding material. The configuration in your system will then be triggered, and once completed, you can use Joule in ABAP Development Tools for this instance.

Best regards,
Alexander

[Pavan_Golesar]

Thank you very much for bringing this to us! 

[Alex_D]

Hi @AlexanderRother 

After the acquisition of 8019541, should I simply sit and wait until Joule becomes available in S/4HANA Public Cloud?

If that is the case, could SAP please revise note 3571857 to make this clear? My requests have also been denied (and there is no option to provide any comments, as the requests are cancelled almost immediately

Thank you

[Basant_Joshi]

@Hi @Alex_D 

Can you please tell me the steps that you have taken till the acquisition of 8019541. 

I am also trying to step joule in my eclipse but got stuck.

Thanks

[JPT]

Hello @AlexanderRother 

We have a 8009282 (Pay-As-You-Go for SAP BTP for cloud test, demo, and development) and added 8019541 (Cloud test, demo, and development for Joule for developers, ABAP AI capabilities) as @karl_kessler mentioned. Now we have it as an additional Service listed in the state "service booked" since 5 days now. When we access our SAP BTP ABAP environment (Provider: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Region: Europe (Frankfurt), Environment: Multi-Environment, Used for Production: No, Beta Features: Enabled, Plan: standard plan) with eclipse (2025-03, 4.35.0, ADT 3.48) just says in the joule window that we should change the project to another one where Joule is enabled.
Authorization/Roles are also checked that SAP_A4C_BC_DEV_AIQ_PC is part of our roles for the devs.

And here we are, what have we missed that we can still not use it?

edit: we set the flag in our subacc for production to yes, still not working

-------------------------------------------------------------

14.04.2025: deployment from sap was succesful, we can now finally access joule on our "steampunk" and it works, great!

11.04.2025: answer from sap: "we received a correction to get the deployment of Joule for ABAP working again. Unfortunately the testing of the correction was negative, so we face a further delay. We apologize for the delay and will you update as soon as a solution is available."

09.04.2025: answer from sap: "currently we have delay in provisioning the item. We will update you as soon as the issue is resolved."

09.04.2025: opened case 402790/2025 "Cloud TDD, Joule for developers ABAP AI (8019541) does not work"

[zfiori]

Hi Community,

"ABAP is SAP’s proprietary programming language and ABAP technology is the solid foundation for both the classic ERP and SAP’s flagship ERP SAP S/4HANA Cloud. Bundled with our strong ABAP development community, the impact and the value of generative AI support for ABAP is obvious. Consequently, SAP decided to invest heavily in the development of Joule skills as well as training and fine-tuning large language models specifically for ABAP."

Thanks for your sharing, it really help us a lot.

🙂

Regards,

ZFiori.

[Basant_Joshi]

Hi @AlexanderRother @JPT 

Is this what i need to get it started ?

[AlexanderRother]

@Basant_Joshi correct

[Basant_Joshi]

Hi @AlexanderRother 

I just want to know one more thing that,

RAP Business Object Generator using ai ( BETA )  is available on 

Provider:

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Region:

Europe (Frankfurt)

Environment:

Multi-Environment

Used for Production:

No

Beta Features:

Enabled

Is it available on above region or not , because i want to generate business objects just by giving prompt. as mentioned in this question, can you please provide me some details regarding it .

 https://community.sap.com/t5/technology-q-a/use-of-ai-in-eclipse/qaq-p/14064005 

[Alex_D]

Hi @AlexanderRother ,

Could you please provide any updates, when this capability will be available for partners (Material 8019541) ?

Service is booked and nothing is happend....

Best regards
Alexander 

[JPT]

Hi @Alex_D same here, at DSAG Tech days i got told that we should open up an incident. So we did and the response was that "there seems to be a delay with the provisioning of the item". But no more than that. Regards

[Alex_D]

The service request has now been successful (previously it was simply cancelled). Our Public Demo System has Joule for ABAP Developer Capabilities enabled.