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).
Category Archives: ABAP
SDN Subscription program – is it worth it?
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.
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.
Next Generation ABAP Development (upd)
And even more on Thomas Jung… This time he teams up with “Mr. ABAP “(I thought that was Horst Keller? – so there is more than one) Rich Heilman to give us a book on “Next Generation ABAP Development”.
“ANOTHER book on ABAP ?”, I hear you shout. Now before you yawn and click away, check out Thomas’ blog post on SDN or read this:
“The structure of this book reflects the workflow of a development project. The first half of the book focuses on creating the data and application logic layers and then service-enabling them. The second half of the book focuses on creating the user interface layers.”
Sounds very promising ! Now let’s pick out some bits from the table of contents:
Chapter 3: Data Persistence Layer
In this chapter, we’ll build the logic that controls the persistence of application data. We’ll start by generating persistent object classes for the underlying data dictionary tables created in Chapter 2. Then, we’ll build a set of business object classes to hide the inner technical details of the Persistent Objects. In addition to the new technology of Persistent Objects, we’ll show you how to use ZIP compression on large strings.
ZIP Compression on large strings?! Wehey.
Chapter 4: Consuming a Web Service
Not all project data will originate from one centralized system. For example, in the sample application, some data will be stored in a legacy system and accessed remotely via Web Services. In this chapter, we will examine the process for generating a Web Service proxy object and integrating this proxy into the data persistence layer.
VERY nice !
Chapter 5: Shared Memory Objects
After some analysis, it will become apparent that the sample application has some static data that will be accessed repeatedly. In this chapter, we will describe how you can provide the best performance by structuring the data access for this type of data into an ABAP Shared Memory Object.
Now which ABAPer hasn’t been at this point and wants help with it? My wallet is opening slowly…
Chapter 7: ABAP and SAP NetWeaver Master Data Management
This is the first of our “What-If†chapters. Here, we look at an alternative approach to the project where our master data is modeled and stored in SAP NetWeaver Master Data Management (SAP NetWeaver MDM), instead of the local Data Dictionary. This chapter will focus on how we would alter the data persistence layer to read this data via the SAP NetWeaver MDM ABAP application programming interface (API) instead of directly from the local database.
It doesn’t get more “now” than this!
Chapter 11: Classic Dynpro UI/ALV Object Model
In this chapter, we turn our attention to user interface logic. In the sample application requirements, there are a group of internal users who are full time SAP GUI users and who need powerful reporting tools. Therefore, we’ll learn how to build a classic Dynpro screen on top of the Model View Controller (MVC), which uses the ALV Object Model for its reporting output.
Chapter 12: Web Dynpro ABAP
Since most of the sample application’s users are not SAP GUI users, we’ll look at how you can build a Web Dynpro user interface for these users. This chapter will focus on real world Web Dynpro applications that contain multiple component usages, ALV integration, and table popins.
Sounds already as if this is a book written by people who know what is required out there now – and what is going to come fairly soon. Especially Chapter 11 is something I come across a lot in my day-to-day work. But there is one more….
Chapter 16: RSS Feed Using an ICF Service Node
In this chapter, we’ll examine how Internet Communication Framework (ICF) Service Nodes can be combined with XML processing in ABAP to produce interesting Web 2.0 type projects. As the final example of the book, we’ll implement an RSS Feed using these technologies.
Right, this is probably not something that most companies would use right here and now, but RSS feed implementation will soon become very commonplace for most ERP installations and not just for a chosen disruptive and experimental few. Still, a very interesting topic indeed.
On the whole – I am thrilled and can’t wait until the beginning of August when this book comes out – it says the “book hits the shelves” on SDN, but there must be a misunderstanding, maybe it’s SAP’s shelves?.
Jung and Heilman crammed all this into 330 pages and a CD with examples, which suggests that not too much detail is provided. The 17 chapters cover a mighty lot of ground. have written a total of 485 pages, which seems ample considering they are covering a mighty lot of ground here. But let’s wait and see.
[UPDATE] Whilst sappress.com announces the book for release in August 2007, I managed to order an english version of it at Galileo Press (SAP PressGermany). Let’s see what happens Stefan Proksch, technical editor of Galileo Press kindly explained in the comments why Galileo Press released the book already. He also told me that there will be a German version of the book, to be released in August this year.
Starship Enterprisey – I love ABAP
Craig and Thomas have really hit bullseye with their “I love ABAP” podcast on the strangely-named “Starship Enterprisey Radio”. Interviewing Thomas Jung of SAP Labs, the three of them once and for all do away with some of the prejudices and (flawed) opinions that seem to have manifested themselves over the last few years.
I have always liked Thomas’ blog contributions on SDN – and I have to admit that his posts have helped me along quite a few times in my daily work. Thomas is a true Guru and totally passionate about everything ABAP.
The podcast also does a tremendously good job in outlining where ABAP is heading to for the future.
Fasten your seat belts – Warp 9, Mr. Sulu !
TechTarget on SAP consulting trends
In his latest “SAP consulting trend trilogy” on SearchSAPs Jon Reed summarises in great fashion the current opportunities, challenges and threats of the SAP Consulting market. In his recent contribution he talks to a large extend about the North American SAP freelance market, but I guess in Europe the general tendencies are the same.
His main conclusions are very much the same as David Foote’s statements from back in February this year (link to previous post on this site): Due to the changes introduced by the Netweaver platform the traditional skill sets of both SAP developers and Basis staff is in flux. In detail, Reed and Foote are both identifying 3 main trends:
- infrastructure (or “integration and reduction” as Foote calls it)
- functional (Foote calls them “Modellers” or “Enablers”)
- business intelligence (data mgt, data warehouse, BW, BI)
Reed explains that the surge of New Dimension product installs is triggered by an increased number of installs at medium sized companies. I’d agree with Reed on this one, but would also add that another contributing factor is that only recently companies properly understood the contribution these products can make to their business and how it can provide them with competitive advantage.
This one made me smile:
Contrary to what SAP may imply — that everyone is moving to 6.0 — companies are upgrading to a range of SAP releases.
On the whole, part one, two and three of Jon Reed’s “SAP consulting trends” document make a very worthwhile read. SearchSAP tends to sometimes pack older SAP career posts into new ones and makes it look as if these were recent, but not in this case. If you’re a SAP Consultant: read it. Once you’ve finished reading it – read it again.
All I would like to see now is a more detailed analysis of the European SAP market…