Developments are happening at a breakneck pace, and SAP is no exception. For some time now, SAP has been busy adding all kinds of applications to the cloud, such as SuccessFactors, Ariba, and Concur. In addition to these solutions, SAP’s Cloud Platform offers a wide range of capabilities, including cloud integration and the Internet of Things.
Keep the core clean
The SAP Cloud Platform is also the ideal platform for implementing customizations. SAP is currently investing in the vision of keeping the “S/4HANA core” as clean as possible—“keep the core clean.” This applies to both S/4HANA on-premise and S/4HANA Cloud. In other words, if there are customizations, migrate or implement them on the SAP Cloud Platform. See also the image below.
Many Opportunities
In addition to the many standard services in SAP Cloud Platform, the Cloud Platform for Developers offers a great deal of flexibility and opportunities:
- The Cloud Foundry platform, which serves as the foundation for the SAP Cloud Platform, offers a wide range of programming languages and technologies
- A wide selection of different databases and database types, each with its own specific advantages and at different costs;
- Within Node.js, there are hundreds of thousands of Node packages to choose from;
- In SAP Cloud Platform, you can create extensions for an existing standard SAP Cloud solution or develop and run a completely new app;
- Seamless integration with other services such as machine learning, the Internet of Things, cloud integration, API management, and much more.
SAP Application Programming Model
As a developer, you may find yourself overwhelmed by all the possible combinations and wondering how to develop in a structured and consistent way.
SAP recognizes the many possibilities for development on the SAP Cloud Platform and has developed the SAP Cloud Application Programming Model for this purpose.
Among other things, this SAP Cloud Application Programming Model provides a kind of “glue” and “structure” that partially generates the front end, services, and back end (i.e., database) for you and “glues” them together. SAP uses a descriptive language (CDS) for this purpose. This variant of CDS bears strong similarities to the already familiar HANA CDS and ABAP CDS variants. By using this descriptive language, you always build your domain model definitions according to a fixed structure. This greatly enhances the readability, clarity, and quality of the code. Here are some key features of the SAP Application Programming Model.
Features of SAP Application Programming
- Describing services and the domain model in CDS;
- Generate database creation scripts; generate JPA;
- It is possible to add pre- and post-scripts within services;
- Contains all kinds of handlers needed when creating services. All of this is built on various open-source libraries and packages used for this purpose;
- Seamless integration with the other services within SAP Cloud Platform;
- You can work with the Cloud Application Programming Model using VS Code, the WebIDE, or Eclipse. There’s a plugin available for all of them, but you can actually use it with any editor.
Cloud Foundry Playground
These are just a few of the features. There are many more to mention. In short, the SAP Cloud Application Programming Model enables you to create so-called full-stack applications in a user-friendly way with higher code quality thanks to its structure and clarity, and it makes development a lot easier. The Cloud Application Programming Model is applicable to both the Java “flavor” of the Cloud Platform and Node.js. With the Cloud Application Programming Model, SAP provides developers with more guidance and tools in the vast Cloud Foundry ecosystem. There are many roads that lead to Rome, and with its SAP Application Programming Model, SAP provides us with an itinerary, highways, and navigation.
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