This post is predominantly for those people in the SAP development community who lament the news that Apple has decided that with iPhone OS 4 any 3rd party dev environments are kicked off the popular mobile platform.

If you’re an accomplished iPhone developer who largely focussed on Adobe’s Flash-To-iPhone compiler or tools such as MonoTouch (both of which I do not know or have used, by the way), then I can actually understand your anger.

However, if you are a developer who lives and breathes the SAP ecosystem -and ABAP in particular- then this whole epipsode must sound to you like a sequel of “Back to the Future”. Apple’s move aims to create a development platform which is dominated by the one and only language Apple (who actually developed the platform’s hardware)  sees fit – Objective-C. Parallels to SAP’s own proprietary language ABAP are not out of place here.

I’ve recently dabbled a little with iPhone SDK and even though ABAP and Objective-C are not very similar languages by and stretch of the imagination, what they do have in common is that their respective “inventors” push these languages for reasons of stability (a strength of both SAP’s ABAP stack as well as the iPhone OS), reliability and performance.

For years now, SAP’s ecosystem has been mainly hailed for its rigid design under the bonnet, the bulletproof-ness, the stability. At the end of the day, vast numbers of global businesses rely on SAP’s technology day in day out. ABAP, love it or loathe it, plays a central part in that. (It also plays a central part in which future path for SAP to turn towards and innovate the core, but that’s another topic).

Maybe it’s because I’ve been using stable Macs for 15+ years now and been part of SAP’s ecosystem for many moons, but why is it so hard to understand that Apple is trying to provide a stable and reliable platform for iPhone, running on hardware Apple has developed itself? I’d wager that the same people who now complain about the locked-down dev platform would also be the first who would complain about crashing iPhone apps had the device not been so tighly regulated.

ABAP, SAP Blogosphere

Let me give you an update on my journey onto pastures greener that are the SAP Netweaver Composition Environment (CE). If you’ve missed the first part of this series, go, go, go and catch up now!

“I find your lack of faith disturbing.”, Darth Vader (Star Wars)

Over the past 2 weeks, I’ve spent a lot of time in SAP’s own Enterprise Services Workplace on SDN, which is a pretty good resource to look through SAP’s latest enterprise service offerings. It’s actually more than that: it’s THE place where you can find up-to-date info on documentation for services which you deem appropriate for consumption or exposure in your own landscapes. On their SDN website, the ESW is described as follows: “The ES Workplace is the central place to view consolidated information about all available Enterprise Services delivered by SAP.”. Fair dos.

You can install an ES Repository yourself, but chances are you’re not always on the latest release, so checking the ESW is always a good way to see what’s around the corner.

Now you would think that the ESW gives you an easy overview of the services on offer, describing to you exactly what each service does (especially when you compare them to each other). You would probably also think that the ESW gives you a nifty little search engine which enables you to sieve through the 2000+ services and get what you want quickly.

Well, things have definitely improved and especially the testing part of the service (against SAP’s own Discovery System, ie an ECC app stack) is much better now. However much is still left to be desired as far as documentation, search facilities and test harness is concerned. Oh, and while I’m at it: don’t even think about opening up the ESW in browsers such as Firefox, Safari or Opera.

It simply looks to me as if these services have been arranged in such a way so they fit well together with SAP’s module documentation and education plans. This doesn’t always sit in line how other consultants look for services.

In contrast, here is the way how I approach a service from a developer’s perspective: I know I want to create a sales order in a backend system. From my old BAPI days I remember that I need a few parameters to feed the service in order to get order processing going without those elusive error messages. You can find the “Sales Orders Create” service easily enough, but of course that’s only part of what’s needed. If you’re looking around for services to find sales organisations, sales groups, divisions et cetera, you’ll be surprised how difficult it can be to get the information out of the backend that you’re looking for. Bottom line for me is: finding the services you require and testing them is still far from easy.

“Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny”, Yoda (Star Wars)

Now as a developer there is an underlying danger in all this. Let me tell you what this is: The more time you spend looking for those services and collecting your data, the more you’re inclined to log into the backend using SAP GUI, enter the letters “S-E-8-0″ into the top left of the screen and create a little remote-enabled function module, expose it as a web service (using a wizard) and get those pesky sales order related details out of the ERP system. Even worse, you’re even contemplating copying a SAP standard function module to extend it so it does what you want it to do. Do not give in to the powers of the dark side….

Now can I just say one thing here: I bet there are other ways to retrieve data out of the backend system. Whilst I love to hear about them, all I want to illustrate here is that I’m currently on a long journey during which I will learn how to find the services I require quicker and get the backend to do what I want it to do. The benefits will be that the customer I work for have systems that need less support and testing after an upgrade, because services to external systems are provided via standard services which are constantly updated and maintained by SAP.

However a little help from SAP by making the ESW easier to use wouldn’t go amiss!

TO BE CONTINUED!

ABAP, SAP Blogosphere, SAP Netweaver ABAP, CE, SOA

SAP Mentor Yoda

“You must unlearn what you have learned.”, Yoda (Star Wars)

Heeding Yoda’s advice, I’m currently in the process of unlearning some (but by far not all!) of the skills I’ve acquired over the years as SAP Development Consultant. During the past 11+ years, I’ve developed a lot of my applications within the ABAP stack, mostly for use within SAP GUI, sometimes within a browser.

Now, to some of you this might sound a bit pretentious, but I wanted to do something new and different! SAP ERP products are great but not perfect. I spent over a decade performing ABAP and config work in order to mold SAP ERP systems into a shape so they do exactly what a business wants. Make no mistake, these years were very valuable for me and my backend expertise is going to come in very handy in my new job. But I wanted to get out and explore, see what’s beyond and discover pastures new.

Over the years I’ve brought a lot of help and value to businesses with my ABAPs and web apps, but it always entailed changes or enhancements within the ERP core system. Sometimes these changes were not easy to make, as end users wanted to keep their system as free of customisation as possible, fearing problems and endless regression tests further down the line.

Moreover, before ABAP OO came along, reusability of development components (DCs) was merely restricted to INCLUDEs and Function Modules. Thankfully this has all changed now. But let’s face it: adoption of ABAP OO based development principles is still not a reality in every SAP development team. Things have definitely improved, but it’s far from being fully adopted.

Enter Composition Environment, Netweaver Developer Studio, Composite Application Framework, Visual Composer, Guided Procedures, Enterprise Services Builder and all these other tools & repositories of a new service-oriented world that is Enterprise SOA. My new world. “The other side of the pond”, as I call it.


“Rest, Neo. The answers are coming.”, Morpheus (The Matrix)

However all these new tools can be quite daunting for a SAP Development Consultant who in the past usually spent most of his time using one single development workbench: SE80. In addition to new tooling and code syntax (Java), a CE development consultant also needs to understand the landscape far better than an ABAPer. It comes with the territory: if you want to build apps that link systems and leverage services then you surely have to know your backend from your Java stack from your Dev Studio. Simple as that.

If you’re an experienced ABAPer then you must expect to be out of your comfort zone (aka ABAP Development Workbench) once in a while. Books, TechEd videos, Tutorials, SAP help and helpful colleagues are hopefully at the ready to make the transition easier for you. Benefits you can reap from the learning process are more DC reusability, agile and flexible development, modern development tools and many, many more  (at least that’s what I hope for!). Imagine to cut down development time and deliver solutions to end users at a much faster pace than what you’re used to in SAP Land. Isn’t that worth the effort?

At this point I would also like to divert your attention to my CompriseIT colleague Tom Scaysbrook’s blog “Journey into SAP”, another great read in the CE arena and beyond.


So what are my observations so far?

• I think that my background in SAP’s web app offerings and ALE/IDOC are a distinct advantage when it comes to understanding services, protocols, MVC paradigm, Object Orientation and parts of the new tooling. So if that’s your background, great.
• Here’s the frustrating bit: most CE tutorials on SDN are out of date. Details in the tooling have changed in CE, disadvantage being that screenshots and descriptions have you got your head scratching more than once. It sometimes happens to me that I spend more time looking for a button or a tab than I actually need to complete the tutorial. CE consultant Thorsten Franz has also emphasized this on SDN some time back in 2008 in more detail.
• diggin deeper: I was curious and had a look at the ABAP coding behind a web service for “sales order management” and was surprised. I guess my expectation was to see a lot of wrapped BAPI calls, but instead I found a lot of usage of the MV45A screen modules (even FCODEs). Very interesting to see how it was done though. Learning how to use BAdIs to enance web services is high on my agenda.
• another perspective: another thing that I find fascinating is the Composite Application Framework. It is integrated into the NW Developer Studio and enables you to write your own CAF services but also define your own structures and data tables. Storage of data (or “persistence” as it is called) is all dealt with by the framework (which is nice!). The topic of “data storage in backend or CAF – pros and cons” will surely tempt me to a blog post in the future.

TO BE CONTINUED !

ABAP, SAP Blogosphere, SAP Netweaver ABAP, CE, SOA

Initially it was Oliver Kohl’s idea to have a Twitter feed that would push out any SAP jobs straight to you. I then thought that my “Yahoo Pipe for UK SAP ABAP jobs” might come in handy for this. A few minutes and messages later I had a play with Twitterfeed.com and not very long after that I was able to expose the result of the Jobserve.com RSS feed, which is captured by Yahoo Pipes and then converted into Twitter tweeds by Twitterfeed.

I am planning to discect these feeds a little bit more by role and location, but for now please check or follow Twitter user @pixelbase_jobs for regular updates on EU SAP contract ABAP jobs (via Jobserve.com).

Eh presto! Pixelbase has got a new service offering ! Thanks to Oliver for the inspiration (I know that he is working on a version for himself, which you can eventually reach under @SAP_jobs )

ABAP, SAP Market contractors, SAP, SAP Market

SAP announced yesterday a drastic 50% price cut for its SDN Subscription packages. Find further info and opinion and the package here. In its announcement, Claudine Lagerholm Sr. Product Manager, SDN Subscriptions, explains:

As you are all aware, the economic landscape has changed very drastically in the last few months, so we’ve decided now was a good time to adjust the pricing.  The goal here is to make the full NetWeaver platform much more accessible and affordable to developers right now, not at some point in the future.

On the whole a very good move by SAP, enabling more developers to gain access to the full dev suite at a much reduced price and offering full support (incl SAP Net ID) for it. The only remaining fly in the ointment now is the restriction to Germany and the US…

ABAP, SAP Netweaver Netweaver, SAP, SDN Subscription

This morning I found an email in my inbox from SAP UK Education telling me about an “extension of certification offer plus 10% discount on courses”. Obviously a decision has been made to offer the certification date range until the end of 2008 for TechEd Berlin 2008 attendees, which exactly what I proposed in my TechEd Berlin roundup from last week.

No matter what the motive for this was – I think it is great news for potential participants of certification exams in the UK.

ABAP, SAP Blogosphere, SAP Education Berlin, certification, SAP, TechEd

Just spent a bit of time on SDN and found the following blogs and wikis interesting and helpful:

• Thomas Weiss’ and his contributions on the Enhancement Framework
• Sergio Ferrari: Plug Business and play music
• Thomas Jung’s sessions on how to update your SAP Netweaver skills

ABAP, SAP Blogosphere, SAP Education, SAP Netweaver

This is by no means an attempt to gain attention or something, but if comments are being deleted then something’s gone wrong. I hope that this is just a technical issue, although it doesn’t seem like it.

The background: I read Jon Reed’s and Matt Danielson’s comments about the state of ABAP and whether it’s Dead or Alive. All in all, I thought their posts (as usual) are rather a remix of what SAPSearch has been going on and on about for a long time now – thereby on this particular topic completely ignoring what else is been reported in the Blogsphere and on SDN. Maybe SearchSAP is feeling the crunch on traffic & ad revenue now that SDN membership is growing bigger and bigger?

So I posted a critical comment to what the SearchSAP Editorial Team had to say on Nov 15th – only to find my comment being deleted yesterday (Nov 19th). Now I am 100% sure the comment did appear on the site. I posted another comment on the 19th asking what happened to my original comment – only to find out 24hrs later that my comment has dissapeared again. They either don’t to do criticism over there at SearchSAP or (hopefully) get back and tell me it’s a technical hitch.

ABAP, SAP Blogosphere

Ed Herrmann has just started a SDN blog (even with images of the unwrapping ceremony) post on his journey with the SDN subscription program (also see here and here). Great idea to document his endeavours like this.

ABAP, SAP Blogosphere, SAP Education, SAP Netweaver SDN Subscription Program

Nigel, Darren and some other folks suggested a London-based Community Day in April 2008. What a marvelous idea! Hopefully more details soon. Add your name on the Wiki page to indicate interest (once it’s up again).

ABAP, SAP Blogosphere, SAP Education, SAP Netweaver

With the SDN Subscription Program SAP for the first time offers it’s whole bunch of development platforms and environments to the development community. Or, in SAP’s words:

“Individuals who purchase an SAP NetWeaver developer license online receive the software, services and educational materials needed to leverage the power of SAP NetWeaver.”

With much fanfare this new service was launched at last week’s TechEd in Las Vegas (well, SDNer heard about it before) and it will first be available in the US and Germany, mainly because of business process issues and localisations. It is rumored that access to the privileged group of SDN Subscription Program users will come with a hefty price tag (around 2300 USD per annum) if compared to similar offerings such as the Microsoft Partner Program (around 400 USD excl VAT).

Is it for me?

This is the first question any aspiring or professional SAP software developer asks himself. In general it is fair to say that installing SAP software is not an easy task, can be very time consuming and requires some help & hints from outsiders. This aspect might already rule out any keen-but-unexperienced, new developer who wants to fast track into a SAP career all by himself. In what way the premium support from SAP can help here needs to be assessed once people actually got their hands on these systems. In addition, installations very often require resource-hungry hardware, which can add to the cost of such an evaluation and development system.

Experienced developers who find themselves without provision of a healthy IT budget from their boss might not be too tempted either. Add up the financial sacrifice of having to fund the subscription out of your own pocket and the time it takes to set everything up (in your spare time) – a fairly obvious answer, especially if all you want is just to have a little ‘nosey’ to see what’s around the corner.

Opportunities in post training or post certification

However if you’re a bit more serious, it might all add up for you if you’re wanting to stretch out your skill set into areas that are not represented in the free, downloadable trials on the SDN website. XI could be one example here. A subscription can enable you to install, train yourself up and develop custom XI applications. One could argue that a SAP XI training and / or certification course could get you there quicker – and you’re probably right there. Having said that, the subscription is probably best to be used to get deeper into a specific area once you’re back from the training course.

Any other takers?

Development teams of IT departments who find themselves in a potential SAP project could benefit by subscribing to the program and thereby trying to be ahead of the game. In this case money, time and staff numbers make the SDN subscription a cost-effective springboard onto a potential and larger SAP project and ensures your team has the edge when the going gets tough. But before I get completely taken away with praise here, I have to mention that potential SAP customers usually have already approached a consulting partner who might be offering a sandbox system for the required platforms and stacks anyway in which case a subscription becomes irrelevant. However it could still bridge a gap before a partner or licensing agreement is established.

One other potential area I can think of are little start-ups and smaller consulting businesses, trying to gnaw their way into what is a crowded market with high financial entrance barriers. A subscription program can be the perfect solution to try out an idea that you have or simply create a demo system in order to taut for new business with a new and swanky SAP bolt-on solution that you’ve had in your head for ages. It remains to be seen what SAP’s legal stand here is (and I am not an expert in this area), as the official line is:

“The program offers individual developers and consultants a one-year license for internal developmental and evaluation purposes(…)“.

“Internal” and “evaluation” being the keywords here….

Conclusion

You might find it challenging to reap the benefits out of a pricey subscription if you’re SAP development newbie on a tight (personal) budget or an experienced developer who just wants to see what’s around the corner. If you fall into these categories, you might be better off by sticking with the free trials and downloads from SDN. On the downside, you do not benefit from the premium support and training material, but you might not need all of this anyway.

If, on the other hand, you’re serious about getting further and learn new SAP development skills and maybe even already contemplated becoming certified in a specific Netweaver area then the SDN subscription program could be a perfect piece in that development jigsaw for you. It can also be beneficial for IT departments who know they might be involved into SAP installations and developments in the near future, but have no opportunity to get their hands onto it just yet – it can be a perfect and cost-effective way to get ahead of the game. Lastly, if you’re an ambitious start-up or someone with a good development idea who found it difficult in the past to get your hands onto a SAP system, then a subscription can be just the ticket.

ABAP, SAP Blogosphere, SAP Netweaver SAP, sap sdn subscription program teched, SDN Subscription Program

On SDN Mario Herger just revealed that SAP will soon offer a so-called “SDN subscription program” by which -for an annual fee- developers can access the complete SAP Netweaver stack. This is SAP’s first announcement in a long time since the initial press release back in October 2006. Requests for a more extended and deeper approach to give developers access to SAP tools seem to have finally hit home.

Through this subscription program we give you access to the full NetWeaver stack – for an annual and as we believe pretty reasonable subscription fee. When we say full NetWeaver stack, we really mean full. Developer Studio, Development Infrastructure, ABAP stack, BI, XI, MDM, Portal, VC etc. are all included. Once you subscribe, you’ll not only get a box with the DVD ROMS, but also access to the Service Marketplace, the OSS, the Enterprise Services Workplace and the Virtual TechEd sessions, as well as some other goodies like premium presence in the forums.

The community now just has to wait and see what exactly is meant by “pretty reasonable subscription fee”. A Virtual SAP TechEd subscription currently costs 440 USD (excl VAT). Since the offering of the SDN subscription program is larger than the Virtual product, one could assume that the SDN subscription program might cost more than this, but that’s obviously a very vague science.

Early sign-up to the SDN subscription program can be made via this link.

ABAP, SAP Education, SAP Netweaver SDN Subscription Program