The Opinion of the SAP Community, Editorial, MAG 17-12

Paradigm shift

SAP is always good for a surprise. The "roadmap" for add-ons, Z-functions and modifications is schizophrenic. The direction of travel turns like a flag in the wind.

November 30, 2017

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This text has been automatically translated from German to English.

At this year's SAP TechEd in Barcelona, Chief Technology Officer Björn Goerke was in his element: He presented numerous development tools, praised the mentors present for their commitment and congratulated them on the tenth anniversary of this organization. It was like the good old R/3 times.

SAP supplies the world with standard business software, which indirectly means that these "half-finished tailor-made suits" still have to be customized and supplemented with add-ons.

Many years ago, this was not a problem with R/3 (Enterprise) and ERP/ECC 6.0 - on the contrary: SAP encouraged users, partners, programmers and mentors to make intensive use of SAP's programming language Abap, thus turning ERP into a perfect business management tool.

I tried to have a licensing discussion with mentors about SAP NetWeaver Foundation for Third Party and the implications of "indirect use" - no go: in the end, this topic was completely foreign and incomprehensible to the brilliant system developers and programmers!

Thus, the problem is SAP's current volatility - the ongoing paradigm shift: Initially, SAP encouraged people to implement Abap modifications and add-ons in the Z namespace (without applying or mentioning optional licensing such as "indirect use").

Then came Hana as a database and platform, and a little later S/4 - new situation: Many Abap tables fell victim to "simplification", which made the ERP system leaner and more powerful.

In addition, SAP started to transfer many standard functions from the Abap table area to the Hana platform, i.e. closer to the database. This was a good paradigm shift: Hana as a platform thus offers more than the SQL DB functions and the entire system becomes faster (not only due to the in-memory computing component). And already it was echoing through the SAP community: Abap is dead!

Of course, some Z modifications lose their purpose and meaning with a release upgrade to S/4. An "Abap cleanup" that takes place cannot be denied and in some cases is not a disadvantage.

At the height of this development, SAP conveyed the image that all system extensions, add-ons, modifications and frameworks would be undesirable and counterproductive - at the very least, they would be subject to the punitive "indirect use" tariff.

Only Hana PAL (Predictive Analysis Library) seemed to have a right to exist. The end of individual programming? The end of the partner community? The end of mentors? A lasting paradigm shift!

A few weeks ago, SAP CTO Björn Goerke stood on the Sapphire stage in Barcelona and showed a "new" developer landscape: Abap is apparently also welcome on the SAP Cloud Platform (SCP) - a rebirth of Abap?

And Goerke was able to present numerous other software development kits (SDK) to the programmers, developers and mentors present: another paradigm shift?

Are modifications to SAP's ERP system landscape now socially acceptable again? Or are SAP's existing customers, partners and mentors once again doing the math without the host? See E-3 license column "A first concession“.