Complete, open, fast - there you go!

With the just acquired diploma of the University of Vienna in my pocket (Software Engineering and Internet Computing) and "affected" by not too much Abap knowledge, I got an exciting task shortly after starting my employment at Snap Consulting: to familiarize myself with SAP's Cloud Application Programming Model (CAP) and to design a cloud version of the product "Digital Signature Folder" based on it.

Complete open tool set

The SAP Cloud Application Programming Model is a framework of languages, libraries, and tools for building applications, services, and apps for the enterprise. It guides developers on a "golden path" of proven best practices and a variety of out-of-the-box solutions for recurring tasks.

After an intensive training phase and with the support of my team leader, I euphorically set to work. The search for documents, documentation, and best-practice examples ended with a first disillusionment. Although already launched in 2018, freely accessible sources of information on SAP's new framework are still somewhat sparse in places. But thanks to innate curiosity, learned perseverance and numerous trial-and-error self-experiments, the implementation has been successful. Because the CAP framework actually provides all the necessary programming tools for process digitization, a complete application can be designed and generated with it incredibly quickly.

The core elements include model-based development and an SDK with predefined, directly usable functionalities. These include the Core Data Services, which generate the required services within CAP, and the Domain Specific Language for the simple description of data, entities, authorizations or user interfaces. And with Fiori tools and Fiori elements, the required user interfaces can be generated quickly.

In practical use, however, one problem has become apparent time and again: Due to the rapid ramp-up of the technology platform and the ongoing provision of new services in the SAP Cloud, it does not always run smoothly as a whole. Unfortunately, I have been annoyed several times by non-functioning services, meaningless error messages or simply unavailable web services.

And quickly also

But back to CAP: The framework runs on the open source JavaScript runtime environment Node.js or Java. The front end does not necessarily have to be developed in SAPUI5 - it can also be the Angular web application framework, for example. Because in principle CAP is an open solution, although not open source.

The open technology platform was a necessary liberation from the good old proprietary, Abap-based client-server technology. This is because the market is increasingly demanding cloud applications and SaaS solutions - with CAP as a domain-focused development framework for enterprise applications, SAP has met this demand. Users are no longer stuck in boiler codes, because the Cloud Application Programming Model automates tedious tasks and addresses the required enterprise and cloud qualities.

Abap-independent

Another impressive plus is the very close integration of the different technologies. When SAP and the Hana database work together, the set is extremely efficient. But the performance is not only right with SAP's own services, but - and this is completely new in many aspects - CAP also works with the services of other cloud providers and performs very well at the same time.

As pleasantly smoothly as the Abap-independent CAP works, in
in the near future, you definitely still have to rely on SAP partners like Snap Consulting to deploy their own resources to learn about the new framework and make it work effectively for customers - including proof of concept. Does this sound familiar to you in any way?