Learnings

For me there were a few learnings from re>≡CAP – potentially a very different experience than others had and highly subjective, but here we go:

1. Sophisticated and complex applications are more and more built with CAP

We often talk about side-by-side extensions, where CAP is being used to extend already existing functionality on S/4 or SaaS solutions. This is still the case of course. But more and more we see entire solutions being built with CAP. Large solutions in some scenarios reaching hundreds (!) of developers (as well as single companies building 50+ applications with CAP). This requires new solution architectures, stronger best practices and so on to allow developer efficiency and building up the least technical debt possible.

In the last months we have looked into some new concepts, like Microservices with a shared database which we looked at in a re>≡CAP workshop and many currently worked on topics like BDC, Dynamic Constraints, work around data federation, Event Queues and many more will feed into this even more.

2. The world is full of hierarchies

Not sure if it was just the developers I talked to during re>≡CAP, but I got a lot of questions around hierarchies and tree tables, where the support with Fiori/OData was recently built on both node and java stacks. It’s one of those features where to my knowledge not too many stakeholders were asking for it, but now that it’s available, the demand is there. As a customer, you can always raise influence requests and let us know which features are missing – so we can prioritize the right things.

3. Interest in CAP is massive

If you’ve tried to get a ticket for re>≡CAP before, you will know that tickets sell out within a few minutes – 3 minutes to be precise. The participants (from 200+ companies) really came from all over the world (~25 countries including Australia!) to participate which is inspiring to see. While the capacity of our current location doesn’t allow for more participants (around 450) I would be thrilled to see how a re>≡CAP with 1000 participants would look like 😉

4. Stay cool, stay local

This heading is not related to the current weather forecasts, I promise. Instead, we see many CAP projects – especially the large and complex ones – going into a mode where applications can only be developed and tested on BTP with all lights switched on.

If you make a small change in your application, you should be able to see the results straight away and not only after a deployment. Troubleshooting is easier on your machine than in the cloud. CAP can mock remote services for you, different configuration profiles let you easily distinguish between `development` and `production` and the local database options (sqlite and h2) let you test almost everything locally out of the box. There was a fantastic workshop showing many of those features by the amazing DJ Adams.

That’s it – my key takeaways. What were your highlights of re>≡CAP?

This years re>≡CAP event was again filled with interesting sessions and workshops, so many that after attending the conference I’m waiting for the recordings to watch the many things I’ve missed. All the positive feedback and the great atmosphere made for a great day, followed by the evening event with a mix of well known and new friendly faces.LearningsFor me there were a few learnings from re>≡CAP – potentially a very different experience than others had and highly subjective, but here we go:1. Sophisticated and complex applications are more and more built with CAPWe often talk about side-by-side extensions, where CAP is being used to extend already existing functionality on S/4 or SaaS solutions. This is still the case of course. But more and more we see entire solutions being built with CAP. Large solutions in some scenarios reaching hundreds (!) of developers (as well as single companies building 50+ applications with CAP). This requires new solution architectures, stronger best practices and so on to allow developer efficiency and building up the least technical debt possible.In the last months we have looked into some new concepts, like Microservices with a shared database which we looked at in a re>≡CAP workshop and many currently worked on topics like BDC, Dynamic Constraints, work around data federation, Event Queues and many more will feed into this even more. 2. The world is full of hierarchiesNot sure if it was just the developers I talked to during re>≡CAP, but I got a lot of questions around hierarchies and tree tables, where the support with Fiori/OData was recently built on both node and java stacks. It’s one of those features where to my knowledge not too many stakeholders were asking for it, but now that it’s available, the demand is there. As a customer, you can always raise influence requests and let us know which features are missing – so we can prioritize the right things.3. Interest in CAP is massiveIf you’ve tried to get a ticket for re>≡CAP before, you will know that tickets sell out within a few minutes – 3 minutes to be precise. The participants (from 200+ companies) really came from all over the world (~25 countries including Australia!) to participate which is inspiring to see. While the capacity of our current location doesn’t allow for more participants (around 450) I would be thrilled to see how a re>≡CAP with 1000 participants would look like 😉 4. Stay cool, stay localThis heading is not related to the current weather forecasts, I promise. Instead, we see many CAP projects – especially the large and complex ones – going into a mode where applications can only be developed and tested on BTP with all lights switched on.If you make a small change in your application, you should be able to see the results straight away and not only after a deployment. Troubleshooting is easier on your machine than in the cloud. CAP can mock remote services for you, different configuration profiles let you easily distinguish between `development` and `production` and the local database options (sqlite and h2) let you test almost everything locally out of the box. There was a fantastic workshop showing many of those features by the amazing DJ Adams.That’s it – my key takeaways. What were your highlights of re>≡CAP? Read More Technology Blog Posts by SAP articles

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