ABAP Cloud has been announced at SAP TechEd 2022 and was part of Juergen Mueller’s day 1 and Philipp Herzig’s day 2 keynote. After SAP TechEd, we provided more details regarding ABAP Cloud in an SAP developer community session and in the keynote of the ABAPConf (in German).
In this blog post, we summarize the basics of ABAP Cloud. At the end, you find links to all the information you need to become an ABAP Cloud developer. Stay tuned – early in 2023 we plan a comprehensive ABAP Cloud blog post revealing technical details about the main ABAP Cloud scenarios.
ABAP Cloud – What is it?
ABAP Cloud
… is the ABAP development model to build cloud-ready business apps, services, and extensions.
… comes with SAP BTP and SAP S/4HANA.
… works with public or private cloud, and even on-premise.
First, let us clear up some potential misconceptions. ABAP Cloud is the new ABAP development model – ABAP Cloud is not a new product. ABAP developers use ABAP Cloud to build cloud-ready apps and extensions on the SAP products SAP BTP ABAP Environment, SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public and private edition and SAP S/4HANA on-premise.
The main ABAP Cloud elements are:
- Core Data Services (CDS) for the data model and for embedded analytics
- The ABAP RESTful Application Programming Model (RAP)
- The cloud-optimized ABAP language for the business logic
- Mandatory public SAP APIs and extension points to allow automated cloud operation
- ABAP Development Tools (ADT) in Eclipse as the ABAP IDE
ABAP Cloud – Evolution or revolution?
The transformation from classic ABAP to ABAP Cloud has been an evolution.
During the past decade, the ABAP Platform unit has been very innovative to support the development of the SAP S/4HANA product and to enable ABAP-based cloud solutions and extensions. The key ABAP Cloud elements CDS, RAP, and the ABAP Development Tools in Eclipse were introduced with or even before SAP S/4HANA and can be used since years.
With our ABAP PaaS offering SAP BTP ABAP Environment (Steampunk), we support customers and partners to build and run ABAP-based cloud apps on SAP BTP. Here, we added the cloud-optimized ABAP language and the first set of public local SAP APIs to the ABAP development model.
The next step was to reuse this cloud-ready ABAP development model in SAP S/4HANA.
In 2022 we launched the SAP S/4HANA Cloud ABAP Environment (Embedded Steampunk) allowing customers and partners to build custom ABAP code directly on the public cloud edition of SAP S/4HANA. This can be a game changer in the public cloud, considering the rich extensibility offering of the ABAP environment!
With the SAP S/4HANA 2022 release we added the new cloud-ready ABAP development model to the private cloud and to the on-prem edition of SAP S/4HANA. This enables customers to choose on ABAP object level whether to use classic ABAP or ABAP Cloud. Again, an evolution – no revolution!
With that, we offer the new SAP S/4HANA optimized and cloud-ready ABAP development model in all main environments – be it SAP BTP or the different SAP S/4HANA editions. And to differentiate from the classic ABAP, we needed a name for this new ABAP development model. The name is ABAP Cloud.
The following picture illustrates the journey to ABAP Cloud.
The ABAP Cloud journey
ABAP Cloud – How can I use it?
Already today, ABAP developers can start using ABAP Cloud elements like ADT, CDS, or RAP in their SAP S/4HANA systems. The complete ABAP Cloud development model, including the cloud-optimized ABAP language and public local SAP APIs and extension points, is available in SAP BTP ABAP Environment and in the 2208/2022 versions of the SAP S/4HANA editions.
The following picture shows the details.
Availability of ABAP Cloud
ABAP Cloud – What is in?
ABAP Cloud is a comprehensive development model covering all aspects to build business solutions. This includes integration scenarios, transactional or analytical apps, and the complete tool and lifecycle support – be it a rich IDE for professional developers or low-code/no-code tools for key users.
The following picture shows the ABAP Cloud map.
ABAP Cloud map
If you miss RAP in this picture stay tuned. In our next ABAP Cloud blog post we will explain all the elements of this ABAP Cloud map in detail, and you will see which boxes belong to RAP.
ABAP Cloud – Where can I find more information?
ABAP Cloud overview
ABAP Cloud section in the ABAP community
ABAP Cloud Developer Resources
Expert content in the ABAP community
ABAP extensibility and Embedded Steampunk
SAP S/4HANA Cloud ABAP Environment (Embedded Steampunk) community
