Year review 2023
An eventful year is coming to an end. In this review we look back at the current year and look ahead to the next year.
Table of contents
The year has already come to an end and, as usual every year, we dare to look back on the past. The focus this year was primarily on creating content for the ABAP blog.
Focus
This year the focus was on the ABAP RESTful programming model and the use of the new functions. We started with the simple structure of a RAP application and slowly worked our way through the various special features in development. But there will also be more RAP content next year, as the model is evolving and we haven't discussed all the details yet.
Another focus was on the ABAP development tools. The IDE is an important part of modern development and should be used by every ABAP developer because, in addition to the standard development functions, it offers additional convenient functions such as simple refactoring, more sessions, clearer tools, additional change history and much more.
Highlights
This year we would like to list our personal highlights, what special events and moments there were.
ABAP Cleaner
The expansion of ADTs to include the open source plugin “ABAP Cleaner” is a special highlight that many developers have been waiting for for years. Implement Clean ABAP quickly and easily, simple refactoring and clean formatting of source code with just the push of a button.
The plugin saves a lot of time and headaches and unifies the coding standard within teams. No more arguments about the correct formatting of statements and time should no longer be a factor.
CRV
The Cloudification Repository Viewer is a small, free tool for evaluating the Cloudification Repository, an important tool for ABAP Cloud and the ABAP Test Cockpit.
The repository gives you important information about released objects that you need for your TIER-1 development. The original repository is a very large JSON file that can be searched using standard search. The tool offers you easy and quick access to the information with a filter for objects and modules.
[Article - Cloudification Repository]
Artificial intelligence
At the beginning of the year, the topic of artificial intelligence was on everyone's lips and we looked at whether ABAP developers were still needed. But the language models are currently not yet ready to provide error-free and modern applications. It still takes a few years before you should think about developing AI. Especially in the SAP area, you need a lot more information about the data models and the existing APIs.
[Article - Developer still relevant?]
ABAP Cloud
The next major expansion in ABAP development is ABAP Cloud, the new development model for the development of clean core and cloud ready applications on all platforms in the SAP landscape, regardless of whether ABAP Environment, S/4 HANA Cloud public and private edition and S/4 HANA on premise. The model can be used in all environments, only the 2022 release is important here. In addition to the development of your own applications, ABAP Cloud also describes the expansion of the system and the use of the APIs provided by SAP.
[Article - Devtoberfest 2023 Recap]
Anniversary
This year we also celebrated our 5th anniversary on our blog. For several years we have been reporting on current events in the SAP community and the new topics that concern us as ABAP developers and will continue to concern us in the coming years.
[Article - 5 year anniversary]
Social Media
At the end of the year we started to be more active on social media. Have started a Twitter / X account and regularly post current articles on LinkedIn. We have also taken on some development capacity and made an RSS feed available in German and English. Next year we will expand this area to gain some reach.
We are currently also examining the capacity to start a podcast and/or a YouTube channel next year. Content in visual or audio form has been becoming increasingly popular for years and is particularly widespread among the younger generation, the colleagues who will be taking over for us in the next few years.
Performance
In this section we take a look at the performance of the items for this year. Which of the articles did really well, where was the community's interest? Let's take a look at the TOP 11 articles that were only published this year:
First and foremost, the topic of RAP is in the unmanaged and custom form; a lot of work here seems to be done in a brownfield and/or remote scenario. Immediately afterwards is the topic of ABAP Cleaner, which was also one of our highlights. In third place is the topic of Modern ABAP, which is still very relevant when it comes to modernizing ABAP development in the company. Here we offered various deep dives to shed more light on the most important statements.
A surprise this year was our last ABAP article, which spread like wildfire within 24 hours thanks to the community on LinkedIn. The numerous views of the article meant that it ended up in the TOP 10 and is still fighting its way to the top of the list.
So thank you for your support this year.
Outlook
What is on the agenda next year? The focus will again be on RAP and the ABAP Environment. To do this, we will delve into the new topic of ABAP Cloud, as we believe it will become an important part of the next few years. In addition to a lot of work at SAP, many companies will also have enough work to deal with the model and rebuild the current development landscape. There are currently ongoing expansions in the area of ABAP Unit and Core Data Services, which we will go into in more detail in individual articles.
SAP is already working on many new features to make our lives as developers easier and to improve our development tools. We therefore think there will be a lot of good news in this area next year; insights were already given at TechEd this year with Joule. Would you like to use RAP to build objects in the future and save a lot of time when creating them? This is already possible today with the RAP generators, but it also requires a little time to create the data model. There will also be support for this.
Conclusion
We wish you a happy new year, stay healthy and continue to have fun with ABAP development and the SAP ecosystem. There are many exciting topics waiting for you next year and we will take you on this journey.
