Fit for HANA – ABAP Development with SAP Fiori

22th May 2019

Review on SAP CodeJam “ABAP for SAP HANA with Fiori” at consenso in Weinheim

On Friday, 29th March 2019, our first CodeJam in 2019 on the subject “ABAP for SAP HANA with Fiori” took place in Weinheim. A total of 14 participants listened to the presentation of the SAP trainers and directly realised the newly acquired skills for an example project in SAP. The only requirement for an active participation was an Eclipse installation with the SAP ABAP Development Tools (ADT).

The migration of the ABAP development tools from the classic, SAP GUI-based development environment towards the open Eclipse platform was already started in 2009. Ever since, the integrated development environment Eclipse has facilitated the work of developers significantly, as several tools can be used in one program – e.g. ABAP development and, in addition, add-ons such as SAP HANA Database Studio or SAPUI5.

In the CodeJam context, a transactional Fiori app based on CDS and BOPF was built and supplemented by draft handling.

SAP Fiori personalises the user experience (short UX) of SAP applications. Modern design principles lead to a strictly role-based and thus simplified user interface for all business units, tasks and devices.

CDS (Core Data Services) views – similar to ABAP dictionary views – provide predefined select queries from one or more database tables based on a data model. With SAP HANA, and due to the so-called “code pushdown”, the focus of data processing increasingly shifts from application to database level. Based on this fact, the necessity of new data modelling approaches resulted in the development of the HANA CDS tools enabling definition of data models based on the database, where views are stored and managed in DLL (Data Definition Language) files.

SAP’s Business Object Processing Framework (short: BOPF) allows the development of ABAP applications without time-consuming implementation of the background logic. Here, existing business objects can be used, or own objects can be created and changed.

Since NW 7.51 SPS 02, draft handling is available and enables the end user e.g. to create an order and save it in an inconsistent state (in the so-called draft state) in order to complete it later on – also on another device.

The atmosphere at the CodeJam was very good, the participants worked diligently, and the trainers were able to answer all upcoming questions directly. And thanks to the newly acquired knowhow on the interaction of BOPF, CDS and SAP Fiori in the new ABAP programming model, all participants could further improve their SAP S/4HANA fitness!

It is therefore more than logical that the planning for the next SAP CodeJam at consenso is already underway! We will keep you updated!