Puru Govind of SAP Labs kicks the ABAP month off with a little contribution on the question whether ABAP is compiler or interpreter.

For a number of years now, SAP offered a vast range of its TechEd sessions in a recorded format, so keen consultants can review sessions or visit those sessions post-TechEd which they were not able to attend during the convention.

SAP now however changed the delivery format of its virtual TechEd sessions from a DVD delivery to a internet-based format. Whilst at first this sounds great, I am not sure how SAP can claim that “Virtual SAP TechEd ’06 lets you learn anytime, anywhere.“, which is clearly untrue, as you need an internet connection for it.

In addition, in the site’s FAQ it says: “SAP TechEd ’06 (…) full-conference registrants who paid for a full conference pass receive access to Virtual SAP TechEd ’06 until Dec 31, 2007 as part of the conference registration package“. So this means you will not be able to review the sessions beyond that date (so can they claim anytime?).

Whilst fortunately all this comes at a slightly cheaper price, it remains a dissapointing service that is of a lesser overall quality than the old DVD-based deliveries. Registrants for the convention in Europe pay £1600+ (flight not included) to visit TechEd for 3 days – they can expect more for their money.

[UPDATE] Amir Blich of SAP responded to my post on SDN as follows:

Thanks for your feedback.
I just released a blog discussing the PAZ program. You can find references to some of your remarks there.

There are always pros and cons when changing delivery channels and I understand you found the DVD sets valuable, but I hope you can find additional value in the online format.

As for the time limitation, before the end of the year, a new TechEd conference will reveal new and updated content. If you attend TechEd regularly, you should have uninterrupted access to the latest TechEd content. If not, as you state, all the latest content is available to you at a reasonable cost.

Let us know of additional ways to enhance the value of PAZ

Regards,
Amir.

As Amir quite rightly says, there are always pros and cons about moves such as this. I just tend to disagree on this one. For this purpose, introducing the PAZ must save SAP some money when compared to a DVD delivery. The community will have to see if this is being reflected in attendance fees. Follow the rest of the SDN thread here.

One of the most exciting (and equally dreaded) books for ABAPers has undergone a major overhaul. Or, according to the author Horst Keller, a complete rewrite.

“This book is the sequel to ABAP Objects: An Introduction to Programming SAP Applications from the SAP PRESS series. Instead of producing a reworked third edition of the Introduction, we have written a new book … In this book, we are offering our readers a compendium of modern ABAP programming and of the key possibilities of the ABAP Application Server in SAP NetWeaver. Modern ABAP programming means programming with ABAP Objects. Contrary to the previous book, ABAP Objects are no longer treated as an addition to classical ABAP, but rather as the underlying programming model.

Whilst I would say that this is probably not the most eagerly awaited book within the SAP Developer Community (no pun intended), it certainly is one of the most important book releases for SAP Development Consultants since -well- the release of earlier version of the book. Since the first version has been released, a lot has changed in SAP Development land. New WAS, WebDynpro, SOA – to name but a few areas.

One thing that always annoyed me about the original book was that almost 50% of it covers basics of the ABAP programming language, which was a pretty redundant part for me.

Sounds like Keller didn’t include this part in his latest, re-written book on ABAP OO. It is also worth noting that this March 2007 release comes along (just like its predecessor) with a SAP Netweaver Testdrive (MiniSAP), which saves you from downloading it from SDN.

Gentlemen, please start your engines !

[UPDATE] One thing I obvioulsy forgot about was that the books has already been released in German (also makes it EUR 10.00 cheaper).

WebDynpro for ABAP (WD4A) is the latest addition to the client-independent UI technolgies for SAP applications. WD4A was introduced with SAP Netweaver 2004s and complements their range of web user interfaces – together with SAP’s own Business Server Pages (BSP) – and of course shares the rendering engine with a (potential) Java Stack, ie its older brother WebDynpro for Java.

With about 18 months of age, WD4A is still a very fresh area, but will gain momentum quickly due to the large dissemination of ABAP skills.

What can you do and where can you look for help should you decide for yourself to lern more about WebDynpro for ABAP? Some link recommendation are below:

• Since ABAP OO is a prerequisite for WD4A, Keller/Krueger’s ABAP OO book has to be the first recommendation
• in order to pratice any code examples it is advisable to install the NW 2004s Trial system from the SAP NetWeaver Trials and Previews section on SDN but make sure you install the latest bugfix and use the latest 6.40 SAP GUI version – you’ll save yourself a lot of time and hassle!
• Ulli Hoffmann’s Web Dynpro for ABAP book has all the hallmarks of becoming a classic, it seems. With a lot of examples, explanations and overviews, long serving ABAPers will find this a good introduction into WD4A.
• SAP developer Thomas Szuecs provides very valuable and noteworthy WD4A blogs on the SDN website
• then there is -of course- the WebDynpro ABAP forum on SDN
• WD4A Beginner Tutorials on SDN can be found here
• a new, great addition on SDN is the WebDynpro Developer Area which covers both WD4J and WD4A.

to be continued !

Please feel free to post/comment any other links you think should appear here !

SAP’s developer network SDN now holds a new forum for niftly little ABAP code snippets. Just what you need to improve skills or satisfy feature savvy users ! It’s all there: vertical tab controls, spool-free PDF viewers or dynamic table display in BSP – you name it.

An interesting post on UI strategies and SAP development by Craig Cmehil. Over the last few years SAP opened up several routes for development environments and UIs. Most important message I think is that SAP offers a portfolio of means of development that gives choice back to the customer. For example, too many people still believe that WebDynpro for ABAP replaced BSP. This couldn’t be further from the truth, as both are aimed at different development scenarios.