Jon Kent just tweeted that freelance SAP Consultants are given a discount when purchasing one of their Annual Subscriptions, giving readers access to their entire online library and allowing to search and print pages, download code examples. This would obviously also include my book.

Currently, the price for an annual subscription is $999, making it $899 for independent consultants.

If your annual bill of SAP book purchases has sky rocketed or you need the convenience of accessing the entire library for the next 12 months whilst on the move then this might be an option for you. (Offer ends April 30th 2013)

SAP CTO Vishal Sikka meeting Mentors at Tech Madrid 2011 (photo M. Gillet)

… please come and say Hello. I might be deep in conversation, thoughts (making sense of it all) or have my nose in a Latte. In any case, please feel free to interrupt for a chat. You’ll usually recognize me by my SAP Mentor shirt with the “@Pixelbase” Twitter handle and the number “70” on the back.

If you don’t want to talk to me then you can still go and discuss all things SAP with any of the other mentors. Believe me, these guys and gals feel as passionate about SAP as you and we are always interested in your views.

Due to popular demand at conferences such as TechEd, I will also hold two Expert Networking sessions this year on “Freelancing as SAP Consultant”. An experienced freelancer myself, I do get a fair amount of people asking me “how do you become a freelancer?” or “when is the right moment to start working as a SAP contractor?“. I want to try and answer these types of questions in my two 30 min sessions on Wednesday, 3pm and Thursday, 2pm. Both talks will take place in Lounge 7, Hall C. My current thinking is that I will record the sessions for a wider web audience. Leave it with me.

Looking forward to meet you in Vegas !

good to finally hold it in my hands!

One of Pixelbase’s main mantras is very much to “Keep it Real”, to provide value for money and real-world advice. It probably might not come as a big surprise to you that “ABAP Development for SD in SAP” was written along the same lines. In order to achieve a certain “real-world feel”, I decided to create end-to-end examples and use two characters (Junior ABAPer “Christine” and Senior SD Consultant “Sean”) and a fictive company (“Byrell Corporation”). While Christine is a young developer, well-versed in topics such as OO programming, Sean is an experienced SD consultant who occasionally dabbled in ABAP, but has never created a class parameter in his life!

We are in it together!

The interesting aspect of the book is that the two actually learn and feed off each other: Christine introduces to Sean topics such as web services, persistent objects and Business Object Layer programming. At the same time, Sean proves to Christine that not everything requires lengthy code enhancements (pricing routines, for example). In other chapters, he shows her how numbering ranges are defined. Just like in a real team environment, both consultants learn from each other. In most chapter projects, they have to weigh up enhancement options, making this process transparent to the reader. The latter is an important aspect of creating “responsible enhancements”, as there is no silver bullet, no “if A then implement B” scenario. My book tries to do away with some of the black magic that enhancements can sometimes being shrouded in.

I picked scenarios and example projects of varying degrees of difficulty which are based on my own experiences in the field, such as

• Validating sales order data
• Capturing and saving additional fields in sales order processing
• Creating CRM activities after SD order billing
• Filtering pricing data within a web service
• Using custom fields in SD pricing
• Setting a delivery block on header level
• Keeping track of delivery KPIs
• Enhance the outbound delivery monitor
• Invoice splitting using VOFM
• Changing reference number and number range in billing

In an initial chapter, readers are also introduced to practical, relevant aspects of user exits, customer exits, enhancements and BAdIs. This should give them a good foundation for future enhancement projects.

Starting with the end

Writing the book was very challenging, as every chapter more or less had to be re-engineered, starting with the end in mind. Once I knew what I wanted to bring across, I had to reverse-engineer a little project in which Christine and Sean played their parts. This was usually the most interesting, but also the hardest part. Once the plot was ready, everything else seemed to slot into place.

Another thing I noted was that I very much enjoy writing. My experience as a SAP blogger came in very handy here. I am particularly proud of the introductory and outlook chapters of the book, where I am trying to deliver a perspective for consultants and developers, providing an informative view that goes further.

An Enhancement Dilemma

A first !

“ABAP Development for SD in SAP” is also the first SAP Press publication that uses a cartoon illustration. A good friend of mine, Stuart Trotter of Rockpool Children’s Books, produced a great illustration, which emphasised my introductory message. I still can’t believe my luck in knowing someone like Stuart, who’s work further enhanced my book. Working with him and spanning the disciplines added yet another interesting facet to my project.

Acknowledgements

Lastly, I would like to thank the SAP Mentor initiative, especially its “wolf pack leader” Mark Finnern, who helped me enormously at an early stage to connect dots and people. Martin Lang, Matthias Steiner and Thomas Jung also helped me significantly in the early stages, when I needed system access for enhancement coding. SAP Press’ very own Kelly Harris and Laura Korslund helped me throughout the project – needless to say that without them none of this could have been achieved.

I would also like to thank friends and colleagues Peter Richardson, Zoe Gill, Arpit Oberoi, Ben McGrail, Stefan Karaivanov, Thomas Otter and Nick Watkins for their feedback, advice, criticism and ideas, which were essential for the completion of the book. Special thanks go to Cath Laursen and Arran McMillan for their assistance with questions around SAP CRM.

Most importantly, my family provided me with plenty of support and help during the 8 months of writing. Thank You to you all!

A Discount Code !

Use discount code UO2JL8WB1 now and receive 10% off the purchase price when buying my book through the SAP Press website (offer expires 31/12/2012).

Personas is derived from Latin, where it refers to a theatrical mask (source: Wikipedia)

SAP Personalisation and Simplification

Over the last 15 years or so, SAP has been working very hard to provide tooling to make a certain level of personalisation easier. Personalisation, Transaction Variants, GuiXT, Screen Exits, Screen Enhancement BAdIs and –in more recent years- the ill-named Floorplan Manager (FPM) were one of the vast number of attempts by SAP to make the building process of friendly user interfaces simpler and easier.

Seasoned consultants know that these tools can only achieve so much. True simplification very often means you have to “dig deeper” using traditional ABAP. If the desired solution is even to look non-SAPish then it might also require changing the development platform entirely and utilising the cumbersome Composition Environment or newer paradigms such as Netweaver Gateway or Netweaver Cloud.

Think that’s plenty to choose from? Think again and say Hi to Personas, SAP’s new kid on the UI Simplification block.

Enter SAP Personas

At first glance, Personas appears to be another groove in SAP’s already large UI revolver. However during last week’s Mentor webinar the presenters Denis Browne, Tobias Queck and Peter Spielvogel made it very clear that “Personas is not part of the SAP’s standard UI offerings”, but rather a “repeatable custom solution”. This means that in the future individual SAP customers can decide whether they would like to deploy Personas or not – once they have paid the additional licence, obviously. Personas was developed in collaboration with SAP customers, who obviously reap the benefits of it first.

Personas is a tool that enables customers to build simpler, browser-based SAP UI screens, originating from traditional, often-cursed SAP transactions. Users can create personalised copies of SAP screens by dragging and dropping fields and buttons into a new screen and then save it as a browser UI template for themselves.

Examples we were shown during the webinar were based on simple use cases such as entry menus and entry screens. However the real power of Personas will be revealed once the creation of a sales or purchase orders is demonstrated.

Users can create screens and include wallpapers, which helps in terms of appeal. In addition, they can share templates with other users and allow to bring in third party content such as search engines. Whilst I can’t see the latter options as highly relevant to SAP customers, they do not hurt either.

MS Silverlight a surprise

Technically, Personas is based on a technology from the last century called ITS (Internet Transaction Server). In recent years, ITS has undergone some modernisations and was directly incorporated into the Neatweaver AS. For Personas, ITS will deliver the screen GUI object layer information, which is then rendered by Silverlight for the browser. Usage of Silverlight here comes at quite a surprise, given the fact that Microsoft themselves will not develop this proprietary UI technology any further. Silverlight never really made a breakthrough at most SAP customers sites I have visited and Microsoft themselves dropping it will not alter this. Overall, the usage of Silverlight is likely put a dampener on the adoption of Personas. However I am sure that future versions will rectify this by utilising a different UI technology such as HTML5.

Personas (which is not the finalised name for this product yet, by the way) could prove to be a valid response to customer pain points in terms of getting users without SAP knowledge onboard and logged on. As pointed out in the first part of this blog post, there are already a number of ways to simplify SAP UIs. Personas adds another facet here. A customer trial or sandbox system would obviously be a great way to demo this to customers, but the custom development route chosen does not allow this at this point in time, which is a slight disappointment.

This simplification technology will still put a lot of admin effort on the already stacked up plate of IT departments, who will have to deal with life cycling, template groups, training et al. In addition, Personas’ very core principle suggests that SAP customers are willing to switch to a (potentially slower) SAP UI technology in the browser, which is likely to filter some potential customers out.

In my view, a true simplification technology for good-old SAP GUI for Windows would be a much bigger winner, but currently there’s no time on SAP’s high-speed train to “Innovation Central” for anything like this.

A mixed bag, but interesting

Despite being a mixed bag, Personas is a move in the right direction. Usage of Silverlight will prove to be the biggest drawback. Important features such as messaging and lifecycling using SAP’s own transport system are provided, which is a plus from a development and admin perspective. Whether customers are willing to switch parts of their user base to a WebUI-like experience remains to be seen. However I was impressed by the “lightweightness” of the solution from a system architectural perspective (leaving the utilisation of Silverlight aside for a moment). In my view, an interesting product to keep an eye on.

I am going to take the opportunity to speak to Personas development team and customers who currently use it during my upcoming visit at SAP TechEd Las Vegas to get an even closer view at this product. Watch this space.

Update: here is a link to the public slide deck used for the Mentor webinar

I have written a book! Back in October 2011 I began talks with Kelly Harris of SAP Press about a technical book for the Sales and Distribution (SD) module of SAP ERP. A lot of emails went to and fro across the Atlantic, discussing content and format, but by Christmas 2011 I started writing.

My book will be published by SAP Press in September October 2012 and is called:

ABAP Development for Sales and Distribution in SAP: Exits, BAdIs, and Enhancements

If you are a beginner to intermediate ABAP developer, functional SD consultant, application architect or involved in a SD project then this is the book for you. In a real-world approach, it will introduce enhancement methods to you and compare them, so you understand the pros and cons. With this book I am hoping to give consultants a better understanding of the enhancement process (how to find enhancements, choosing the right method, implementing them properly).

You can pre-order the book now from the SAP Press online store, but I’ve been assured that there will be many ways to get hold of it once it has been published.

There’s a lot more to report, especially on the process of writing. Once published (October 2012), I will talk more about the book and how it came about.

Many years ago, I had a cartoon pinned up by my office desk. It was a caricature of a pianist-like dressed man, sitting by a PC. Over the course of several sketches he got more and more excited, hitting and bashing the computer keyboard in ecstasy. The final frame showed him throwing back his hair, a satisfied smile on his face. He seemed exhausted, but happy. Alone, yet in awe of his work. Underneath the cartoon it read in German: “Der kreative Programmierer” (the creative programmer).

Fast forward to 2012 and this cartoon of the creative programmer appears to be more alive than ever. I have had it with tweets/posts/articles telling me about “creative programming” or something close to it. In my world, combining the words “programming” or “coding” with “creativity” does not compute. I find it also not helpful, because it gives the wrong impression to aspiring software developers as to what is actually involved in the task. You are not sure? Well, bear with me a little.

Welcome to my world

What is my world? For those who do not know me, I have been a SAP Development Consultant since 1998, who mainly programs in SAP’s proprietary language ABAP. There are other languages like Javascript and Flex I sometimes need to use to get my work done, but ABAP is what SAP’s applications are mainly based on, because that’s what you use to code business logic for a SAP system. It’s what this language was made for. However what I am saying is universally applicable to any programming language or development environment. Depending on the projects I work on, I also get perform analysis and gathering of requirements.

When it comes to development of business applications, best practice is to either have a design, a specification or some sort of document that tells a programmer what is required from him or her. It’s what comes out of the analysis phase. Such a specification is the cornerstone of business application development, because it is a contract between the people that requested functionality (you might even replace “functionality” with “app” here) and the ones that cut the code for it. Believe me, if you are an IT department, without such a document or agreement, you will spend too much time and money getting your developments right. If a specification or design is done right then the programmer should know pretty well what to do. There is no programming creativity required anymore at this stage, the program should cascade from the specification. In addition, there should be a standards document that gives the programmer information about naming standards, how to structure your code and how interfaces should look like, for example.

If you now say that specifications never live up to the detail they ought to contain in a perfect world, then I say: this should not be ironed out by a creative programmer, who goes away and does his or her own thing. If a specification or analysis document is below par then this reveals a poor development process in general, which has to be resolved upstream and at the source. Otherwise it’s like compensating for a bad golf swing by simply moving your body to one side. It’s lazy.

Saying this is of course not very fashionable and snazzy, especially with all the innovation hype that’s pumped out by today’s software corporations. These days, every software developer who is seeking success is easily sucked into thinking that in order to develop the next Instagram or Twitter, you have to be perceived as out there, creative, getting it. Here is the kicker: as far as the pure programming is concerned, you need to stick to agreed rules.

Am I saying that no creativity is involved ?

My answer: Far from it. But here is my criticism: No one seems to say that coding in itself is not the creative part of developing software successes. From my own experience, successful software projects are based on all or a combination of these points:

• Good, successful software is a team effort – this has always been the case in IT history and is not a new paradigm
• Analysis and gathering requirements with the actual users is important because that’s where you ensure your product doesn’t suck. It’s where you listen.
• You never design or specify software in a vacuum. Respecting boundaries (budgets, software platforms, languages, your customer etc) is important. It’s also an important difference to the work of artists, who are not limited by boundaries.
• If you develop in a team environment, you need standards and agreements that go beyond the daily programming and span entire projects.
• Finally, coding requires focus and discipline. You need to stick to what has been agreed and specified. In some cases, this is one of the last steps of a long software development journey

Just a human brain and a machine

Of course, you can sit at home and hack away to your heart’s content. I deeply encourage you to do so, because it is great for learning. You might conjure up some cracking prototypes, something that combines technologies and will be the foundation stone of IT’s future. You will still be restricted many things, but this probably is the closest to creativity you can get. It’s just a human brain and a machine – I know this can be thrilling, for sure. It might be the first of a million baby steps towards something new, but it does not resemble the creation of something that is scalable, timeless and profit making, which are the hallmarks of successfully designed software.

Successful software is brought to life not by creative programming, but by listening, analysing, negotiating and (in the end) coding and sticking to what people have agreed on. Coding is a skill, not a talent. Power needs control.

By the way: I’ve been trying to dig up the mentioned cartoon, but can’t hunt it down. Please contact me if you have it or can get hold of it.

I have yet to see this evening’s Demo Jam, but so far it’s been a worthwhile trip, which is mainly down to networking and chats I had. Here are my key points:

User Interface and User Experience: demos and presentations were around HTML5 – either driven by Sybase Unwired Platform or developed straight using HTML5 and CSS3. For example, Keytree demoed an interesting live retail app for iPad that uses HTML5, hooked up to a SAP retail backend via homebuilt RESTful services. CompriseIT demoed a new SAP tool to generate native iOS consumption UIs for Netweaver Gateway services.

UI5: It didn’t come as a surprise to me, but there were no specific news on SAP’s new UI framework UI5 (which is jQuery based). However, according to the SAP partners I spoke to it is something everyone is looking into now. Keytree mentioned they are using Sencha libraries (a Javascript framework) on top to add touch interface capabilities to UI5 (which currently only is for desktop). Personally, I am excited about UI5 and expect further developments on tooling and framework from SAP later this year.

Gateway: I liked that most presentations clarified that not just SUP can be used for consumption, which was in contrast to information available during TechEd 2011 in Madrid, where participants often thought SUP is the only way to consume Gateway. I attended two interesting sessions by SAP labs’ very own Yaad Oren, including a Kinect-enabled Gateway solution and a Siri-based prototype called SiPi (using Open Ears). In the latter, a video showed a SAP CRM lead being created using iPhone voice recognition and later an image was added to the CRM business partner by searching the person on Facebook, based on facial details. This is a very likely future use-case, yet it still makes me slightly shudder! (Disclaimer: the app is only a prototype!). As far as a wider developer engagement for Gateway is concerned, it seems that a reliance on the SAP partnering framework is the chosen path for now. Whether this will hamper the “billion users” ambitions SAP has remains to be seen.

… and you spot me either rushing from session to session or in deep conversation with someone, I urge you to interrupt me for a chat. You’ll recognise me by the “@PIXELBASE” Twitter handle on my SAP Mentor shirt.

Independent SAP Development Consultants like myself can be less influenced by the latest trend and fashion, because our work is very often based on current customer project requirements. I therefore tend to be more pro customer-side, trying to “keep it real” and end-user relevant. Having said that, it’s also important to get a glimpse of the future and accustom yourself with upcoming products. That’s one of the reasons why we’re all going to TechEd.

One more word with regards to SAP Mentors: We’re a groovy bunch, but just because we’re Mentors doesn’t mean we know everything. SAP Land is a vast space and not one single person can claim to have the complete knowledge. And to be honest, we don’t have to, because we are a passionate, open, collaborative and extremely communicative team. Believe you me, we can talk for hours about SAP stuff.

If you have a question about Mentors, our initiatives or you even want to chat about something that bugs you, then let us know. We can be quite critical about SAP and its products, too and we’d love to hear your constructive thoughts.

And most of all…. HAVE A GREAT CONFERENCE !

As it happens, today I had a work discussion that touched on just that. We were faced with the choice between something that ticks the “timescale” and “achievement” boxes and something that ticks the “appealing” and “users will love it” boxes. Suffice to say what the obvious business decision was… once again, Quality was Job One.

I see this at a lot of SAP sites. The implementation team knows that users are not particularly happy with the system, but everyone seems to be getting their work done, so why do things different? The SAP team therefore focusses on the measurable part, the quality. They might even say: “Hey, SAP is standard software after all. If you want to have fun, install Garageband on your own machine at home!”. I used to say that, too. But not anymore. Because things have moved on.

So here are some key points to all of those who oversee developments and have the power to decide whether a development should do same-old-same-old or push some boundaries:

• trust your senior developers, let them “loose” every now and then
• use prototyping to explore new areas once in a while
• not everything has to be done in SAP GUI (or downloadable into Excel, for that matter)
• send your team to events such as TechEd
• have the guts to defend your team’s efforts and ideas in front of your superiors

Nowadays outsourcing of SAP resources has become commonplace. Standards and SLAs have improved the overall service provided. However I have yet to speak to a client who wholeheartedly loves it. Most of them do it, driven by cost pressures, not conviction or deep belief in its merits.

As mentioned in my comments, I compare it to the big mains gas or water utilities that bring in expertise to deliver a service to your street or door. Skilled in-house teams or freelance resources then get it into your home.

It’s not what outsourcers will tell you, but it’s what my experience has shown me.

I’m looking forward to the next instalments.