Frequently Asked Questions

SAP® Cloud Platform ABAP® Environment | August 2018

SAP® Cloud Platform ABAP® Environment:

Frequently Asked Questions

SAP Cloud Platform ABAP environment is SAP’s platform as a service (PaaS)

offering for ABAP® development. ABAP has been the foundation for SAP’s on-
premise solutions for many years, and it is the foundation for SAP S/4HANA as
well. With SAP Cloud Platform ABAP environment, ABAP developers can leverage
their existing ABAP know-how to develop and run native ABAP applications, either
as an extension to SAP software or as standalone applications.

2 Overview

4 Development Aspects

5 Extension Scenario

6 Additional Questions
© 2018 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.

1 / 6
 OVERVIEW

What are the main SAP Cloud Platform ABAP environment enables the ABAP developer
advantages of SAP community to build innovative cloud applications, leveraging the latest in
Cloud Platform ABAP cloud services, without spending effort to learn new programming
environment? languages, programming environments, and development tools.
Customers and partners can build extensions for SAP applications, like
SAP S/4HANA Cloud, as well as develop new cloud applications. SAP
Cloud Platform ABAP environment is also an option to transform existing
ABAP-based custom code or extensions to the cloud.

SAP Cloud Platform ABAP environment supports a bi-modal IT strategy by

enabling customers to keep SAP applications such as SAP S/4HANA
Cloud as standard, and use the SAP Cloud Platform as a central extension
environment. This allows customers to standardize their SAP
implementations across regions, business units, and potentially, verticals.
Ultimately this helps customers always stay on the latest version of the
SAP application, establish best practices for agile development in the
cloud, and reduce IT costs.

Finally, SAP Cloud Platform ABAP environment includes SAP HANA for
data storage and processing, providing access to SAP Cloud Platform
services such as integration, machine learning, streaming, and IoT. The
SAP Cloud Platform ABAP environment is based on Cloud Foundry
technology, and it runs on a selection of cloud infrastructure providers like
Amazon Web Services. ABAP developers can also leverage the services
provided by cloud infrastructure providers. This helps customers combine
domain knowledge with the latest innovations to support new business
models, or enter into new market segments and regions.

2 / 6

© 2018 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.

What does SAP Cloud SAP Cloud Platform ABAP environment is based on the latest ABAP
Platform ABAP platform cloud release which also powers SAP S/4HANA Cloud. SAP
environment offer? Cloud Platform ABAP environment includes SAP HANA for data storage
and processing. The software stack contains standard technology
components from the standalone ABAP application server. It supports the
modern RESTful programming models, including SAP Fiori and core data
services. Access to SAP applications is offered thru APIs according to a
new whitelisting approach. The development environment is based on
ABAP development tools for Eclipse. There are minor adaptations in the
tool environment and ABAP language to ensure secure and stable cloud
operations.

When will it be SAP Cloud Platform ABAP environment is generally available beginning
available? Sept 2018. An Early Adopter Care Program will be setup to collect
feedback from customers and partners, and to support their first projects
in the new environment. The current roadmap starts with the extension
scenario for SAP S/4HANA Cloud. More use cases will be added soon.

What are the costs? ABAP tenants in SAP Cloud Platform will be offered in different sizes (for
example, size of server RAM and SAP HANA database quotas). See the
pricing on SAP Cloud Platform ABAP environment webpage.

3 / 6

© 2018 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.

 DEVELOPMENT ASPECTS

­­Which development SAP Cloud Platform ABAP environment supports the standard Eclipse-
environments are based environment with ABAP development tools. The traditional ABAP
supported? workbench (SE80) is not supported. Git integration allows import and
management of development artifacts such as ABAP code and data
dictionary objects, providing open, standards-based, state-of-the-art
version management control.

Are there any changes SAP Cloud Platform ABAP environment introduces a subset of the ABAP
to the ABAP Language? language optimized for the cloud. This subset excludes statements that
are not compliant with secure cloud operations, such as direct access to
the file system. In addition, statement variants which have already been
deprecated have been removed from the language scope.

Which SAP services In order to ensure secure and stable upgrades of the underlying software
and SAP objects can be stack, only whitelisted SAP APIs can be used. Using other SAP objects of
used? the underlying software stack will not be possible.

­­What is the SAP Cloud Platform ABAP environment will support the modern RESTful
programming model for programming model, including core data services and SAP Fiori, which is
SAP Cloud Platform also used for SAP S/4HANA development.
ABAP environment?

­­Will SAP Cloud No, Neo environment will not be supported. SAP Cloud Platform ABAP
Platform ABAP environment will be available on the SAP Cloud Platform Cloud Foundry
environment be environment.
available in SAP
Cloud Platform Neo
environments?

4 / 6

© 2018 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.

 EXTENSION SCENARIO

­­Which SAP products The main focus of the Sept 2018 release is to extend SAP S/4HANA Cloud.
can be extended with Technically, any product can be extended.
SAP Cloud Platform
ABAP environment?

­­
How can SAP objects in The ABAP environment is used for a side-by-side extension approach. This
the extended product allows developers to decouple extensions from core functionality to
be accessed? improve agility and stability. Development and operation of extensions on
a separate platform as a service require remote connection to the
extended product such as SAP S/4HANA Cloud.

­­Can existing ABAP The extent of code reuse depends on the quality and nature of the custom
custom code be or partner code. Loosely-coupled add-ons with a clear interface to SAP
migrated to SAP Cloud objects will have more code reuse. Custom code interwoven with the
Platform ABAP extended product might require refactoring.
environment?

5 / 6

© 2018 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.

 ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS

­­
What is the difference SAP Cloud Platform ABAP environment is SAP’s platform as a service
between SAP Cloud offering for ABAP. SAP Cloud Platform ABAP environment provides the
Platform ABAP possibility to develop and run ABAP extensions and leverage existing SAP
environment and other Cloud Platform services. Customers will be able to consume ABAP
cloud offerings such as innovations in an SAP-managed enterprise PaaS environment. Partners
CAL? will be enabled to productize their apps. In contrast, CAL provides images
of on-premise SAP solutions in an IaaS environment such as AWS or Azure
where the customer runs an application outside the SAP Cloud Platform
environment. The customer is responsible for operating and updating the
CAL-based ABAP system on their own.

­­Is ABAP cloud ready? In general, ABAP stems from the on-premise world, and does not yet
Can ABAP launch compete in pure cloud-scale use cases with runtimes specifically designed
service instances and for the cloud.
containers in seconds,
like other SAP Cloud Each runtime in SAP Cloud Platform has its sweet spot. ABAP provides a
Platform runtime proven platform for enterprise-ready business applications, and allows
environments? SAP’s installed base to transform ABAP knowledge and ABAP investments
to the cloud. Additionally, ABAP has already proven its cloud-readiness for
business applications, being the stable foundation for SAP S/4HANA
Cloud. SAP Cloud Platform ABAP environment achieves this stability with
continuous optimizations in areas such as multitenancy, cloud operation,
and cloud extensibility.

­­
Will existing SAP Cloud Reimplementing existing SAP Cloud Platform services is not necessary
Platform services and since they can be used from within ABAP thanks to the microservices-
libraries written in Java based architecture of SAP Cloud Platform. Additionally, SAP Cloud
or Node.js be Platform ABAP environment will provide its proven business application
reimplemented in programming capabilities and services in the cloud.
ABAP?

6 / 6

© 2018 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.

Follow all of SAP

www.sap.com/contactsap

(18/08)

© 2018 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form

or for any purpose without the express permission of SAP SE or an SAP
affiliate company.

The information contained herein may be changed without prior notice.

Some software products marketed by SAP SE and its distributors contain
proprietary software components of other software vendors. National
product specifications may vary.

These materials are provided by SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company for

informational purposes only, without representation or warranty of any
kind, and SAP or its affiliated companies shall not be liable for errors or
omissions with respect to the materials. The only warranties for SAP or
SAP affiliate company products and services are those that are set forth
in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and
services, if any. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an
additional warranty.

In particular, SAP SE or its affiliated companies have no obligation to

pursue any course of business outlined in this document or any related
presentation, or to develop or release any functionality mentioned therein.
This document, or any related presentation, and SAP SE’s or its affiliated
companies’ strategy and possible future developments, products, and/or
platforms, directions, and functionality are all subject to change and
may be changed by SAP SE or its affiliated companies at any time for
any reason without notice. The information in this document is not a
commitment, promise, or legal obligation to deliver any material, code, or
functionality. All forward-looking statements are subject to various risks
and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from
expectations. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these
forward-looking statements, and they should not be relied upon in making
purchasing decisions.

SAP and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as
their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP SE
(or an SAP affiliate company) in Germany and other countries. All other
product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective
companies.

See www.sap.com/corporate-en/legal/copyright/index.epx for additional

trademark information and notices.