On Thursday, August 28, we at INNOV8iON hosted a webinar on SAP Business Application Studio. During the webinar, we highlighted some key features of Business Application Studio. In this blog post, we’ll briefly cover them all so you can get a good overview of the key possibilities available to you as a developer. Would you rather read the Dutch version? The 5 Main Benefits of SAP Business Application Studio
1. Guided development
Guided Development for Fiori Elements is a great feature in the new SAP Business Application Studio. Annotations have always been a bit tricky, and there was never a good way to look them up. Guided Development is like a software development kit (SDK) for Fiori Elements integrated into Business Application Studio (BAS). So not only do we now have a great way to look up annotations, but Guided Development will also generate usable code for us and provide some input assistance as well. Guided Development also makes searching for annotation guides very easy. And if you can’t find the annotation you’re looking for, you’ll have the option to request a guide directly from SAP. So hopefully, we can expect a huge number of guides in the future. And who knows… Maybe the guide you requested will be ready for you the next time you log in.
2. Command Line Interface access
Yeah, you read that right—in SAP Business Application Studio, you have access to the command-line interface. This gives you the flexibility of a local development environment combined with the benefits of a cloud-based development environment. While you have full control over the development environment, you can also imagine the possibilities this opens up, since you can use almost every tool it offers.
3. Split screen: Code editor combined with the layout editor
SAP Business Application Studio allows you to use split-screen mode while developing a UI5 application. This lets you open a visual layout editor at the same time as the code editor. This way, you can drag and drop elements in your application’s view and see the corresponding code being generated in real time. The fact that this split-screen mode is available makes using the layout editor a much smoother experience. You can use the layout editor to design your view very quickly and easily. And seeing exactly where the code is being generated can really help you understand how your view is built. This is a particularly useful feature for people who are new to SAPUI5 and XML views.
4. Dev spaces
A dev space in BAS is a separate development environment that feels like a container. This concept holds some hidden gems. When you want to develop an application, you need to create a dev space. During the creation process, you’ll be asked a few questions to determine the most suitable dev space for your project. After selecting the right dev space, it will create a fully isolated development environment with command-line access, pre-installed tools, capabilities, and resources that may be useful for your project. This saves you a lot of time since you don’t have to set up the development environment yourself, and it allows you to efficiently develop, run, build, and test your application in no time. Since dev spaces are fully isolated, they give you the freedom to do whatever you like with your project without affecting any other project. Last but not least, dev spaces are easy to transfer since they can be exported and imported. Copying them for similar projects is a breeze.
5. Extensions
To enhance the existing functionality of your dev space, you can add some additional extensions to your project to meet all your development needs. If you’d like, you can create a serverless extension and use it in your project. This is a pretty cool concept, and you can read more about it in this blog.
Bonus: The End of Neo-Based Trial Accounts
A few weeks ago, we received this message in a trial account of the WebIDE:
Since SAP is focusing on Cloud Foundry, the neo-based WebIDE trial will reach its end of life in November 2020. We recommend that you don’t wait until then, but get started with BAS now to experience its capabilities and watch it grow in the coming months. Keep in mind: BAS is a relatively new product and will likely evolve significantly. We’re excited about it and can’t wait to see what’s in store!
Here’s what we think about SAP Business Application Studio
In our opinion, SAP Business Application Studio is definitely ready for productive use. Even though some important features are still missing, such as the ability to easily extend a standard SAP Fiori application. We hope to see BAS evolve in the coming months into a full-fledged IDE that includes the ability to easily extend standard Fiori apps. BAS is a great IDE for hardcore developers (primarily in the cloud) who want full control. If SAP also adds the ability to do ABAP and CDS development in BAS, it will become the go-to IDE for full-stack developers as well.
The Webinar: Unboxing SAP Business Application Studio
Did you miss the webinar? Don’t worry, we recorded the session.
Interested in the individual demos we presented during the webinar? Stay tuned to our social media and website! And to my colleague Tyler Fincham: A special thanks to you for co-authoring this post with me.
