SAP Cloud Platform ABAP Environment: Frequently Asked Questions

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1 Frequently Asked Questions SAP Cloud Environment August 2018 SAP Cloud Environment: Frequently Asked Questions SAP Cloud environment is SAP s platform as a service (PaaS) offering for ABAP development. ABAP has been the foundation for SAP s onpremise solutions for many years, and it is the foundation for SAP S/4HANA as well. With SAP Cloud environment, ABAP developers can leverage their existing ABAP know-how to develop and run native ABAP applications, either as an extension to SAP software or as standalone applications. 2 Overview 4 Development Aspects 5 Extension Scenario 6 Additional Questions 1 / 6

2 OVERVIEW What are the main advantages of SAP Cloud environment? SAP Cloud environment enables the ABAP developer community to build innovative cloud applications, leveraging the latest in cloud services, without spending effort to learn new programming languages, programming environments, and development tools. Customers and partners can build extensions for SAP applications, like SAP S/4HANA Cloud, as well as develop new cloud applications. SAP Cloud environment is also an option to transform existing ABAP-based custom code or extensions to the cloud. SAP Cloud environment supports a bi-modal IT strategy by enabling customers to keep SAP applications such as SAP S/4HANA Cloud as standard, and use the SAP Cloud Platform as a central extension environment. This allows customers to standardize their SAP implementations across regions, business units, and potentially, verticals. Ultimately this helps customers always stay on the latest version of the SAP application, establish best practices for agile development in the cloud, and reduce IT costs. Finally, SAP Cloud environment includes SAP HANA for data storage and processing, providing access to SAP Cloud Platform services such as integration, machine learning, streaming, and IoT. The SAP Cloud environment is based on Cloud Foundry technology, and it runs on a selection of cloud infrastructure providers like Amazon Web Services. ABAP developers can also leverage the services provided by cloud infrastructure providers. This helps customers combine domain knowledge with the latest innovations to support new business models, or enter into new market segments and regions. 2 / 6

3 What does SAP Cloud environment offer? SAP Cloud environment is based on the latest ABAP platform cloud release which also powers SAP S/4HANA Cloud. SAP Cloud environment includes SAP HANA for data storage and processing. The software stack contains standard technology components from the standalone ABAP application server. It supports the modern RESTful programming models, including SAP Fiori and core data services. Access to SAP applications is offered thru APIs according to a new whitelisting approach. The development environment is based on ABAP development tools for Eclipse. There are minor adaptations in the tool environment and ABAP language to ensure secure and stable cloud operations. When will it be available? SAP Cloud environment is generally available beginning Sept An Early Adopter Care Program will be setup to collect feedback from customers and partners, and to support their first projects in the new environment. The current roadmap starts with the extension scenario for SAP S/4HANA Cloud. More use cases will be added soon. What are the costs? ABAP tenants in SAP Cloud Platform will be offered in different sizes (for example, size of server RAM and SAP HANA database quotas). See the pricing on SAP Cloud environment webpage. 3 / 6

4 DEVELOPMENT ASPECTS Which development environments are supported? SAP Cloud environment supports the standard Eclipsebased environment with ABAP development tools. The traditional ABAP workbench (SE80) is not supported. Git integration allows import and management of development artifacts such as ABAP code and data dictionary objects, providing open, standards-based, state-of-the-art version management control. Are there any changes to the ABAP Language? SAP Cloud environment introduces a subset of the ABAP language optimized for the cloud. This subset excludes statements that are not compliant with secure cloud operations, such as direct access to the file system. In addition, statement variants which have already been deprecated have been removed from the language scope. Which SAP services and SAP objects can be used? In order to ensure secure and stable upgrades of the underlying software stack, only whitelisted SAP APIs can be used. Using other SAP objects of the underlying software stack will not be possible. What is the programming model for SAP Cloud Platform ABAP environment? SAP Cloud environment will support the modern RESTful programming model, including core data services and SAP Fiori, which is also used for SAP S/4HANA development. Will SAP Cloud environment be available in SAP Cloud Platform Neo environments? No, Neo environment will not be supported. SAP Cloud environment will be available on the SAP Cloud Platform Cloud Foundry environment. 4 / 6

5 EXTENSION SCENARIO Which SAP products can be extended with SAP Cloud Platform ABAP environment? The main focus of the Sept 2018 release is to extend SAP S/4HANA Cloud. Technically, any product can be extended. How can SAP objects in the extended product be accessed? The ABAP environment is used for a side-by-side extension approach. This allows developers to decouple extensions from core functionality to improve agility and stability. Development and operation of extensions on a separate platform as a service require remote connection to the extended product such as SAP S/4HANA Cloud. Can existing ABAP custom code be migrated to SAP Cloud environment? The extent of code reuse depends on the quality and nature of the custom or partner code. Loosely-coupled add-ons with a clear interface to SAP objects will have more code reuse. Custom code interwoven with the extended product might require refactoring. 5 / 6

6 ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS What is the difference between SAP Cloud environment and other cloud offerings such as CAL? SAP Cloud environment is SAP s platform as a service offering for ABAP. SAP Cloud environment provides the possibility to develop and run ABAP extensions and leverage existing SAP Cloud Platform services. Customers will be able to consume ABAP innovations in an SAP-managed enterprise PaaS environment. Partners will be enabled to productize their apps. In contrast, CAL provides images of on-premise SAP solutions in an IaaS environment such as AWS or Azure where the customer runs an application outside the SAP Cloud Platform environment. The customer is responsible for operating and updating the CAL-based ABAP system on their own. Is ABAP cloud ready? Can ABAP launch service instances and containers in seconds, like other SAP Cloud Platform runtime environments? In general, ABAP stems from the on-premise world, and does not yet compete in pure cloud-scale use cases with runtimes specifically designed for the cloud. Each runtime in SAP Cloud Platform has its sweet spot. ABAP provides a proven platform for enterprise-ready business applications, and allows SAP s installed base to transform ABAP knowledge and ABAP investments to the cloud. Additionally, ABAP has already proven its cloud-readiness for business applications, being the stable foundation for SAP S/4HANA Cloud. SAP Cloud environment achieves this stability with continuous optimizations in areas such as multitenancy, cloud operation, and cloud extensibility. Will existing SAP Cloud Platform services and libraries written in Java or Node.js be reimplemented in ABAP? Reimplementing existing SAP Cloud Platform services is not necessary since they can be used from within ABAP thanks to the microservicesbased architecture of SAP Cloud Platform. Additionally, SAP Cloud environment will provide its proven business application programming capabilities and services in the cloud. 6 / 6

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