Before we get started developing data models in SAP HANA Cloud, we should introduce the key tool we will use, SAP Business Application Studio.
SAP Business Application Studio is a very powerful, web-based Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that is used to develop all components of a modern, full-stack application including the interface, the application and the database layer.
SAP Business Application Studio supports development of cloud, on-premise and hybrid applications that integrate SAP and non-SAP technologies.
SAP Business Application Studio is probably the only development tool that you will ever need as it includes a huge number of features to support many development scenarios. One of those scenarios is data modeling in SAP HANA Cloud. This is the scenario we focus on in this learning journey.
SAP Business Application Studio is based on Visual Studio Code, which is an open-source software project started by Microsoft. It is widely adopted by the development community and is popular choice for developers because it allows them to plug-in their favorite extensions that provide additional tooling for their development projects. SAP and third parties provide many plug-ins for different types of SAP development projects to increase developer productivity.
SAP Business Application Studio provides text and graphical editors to create development artifacts, plus a command line interface (CLI).
A key feature of SAP Business Application Studio is the native Git support for source file version management. Git controls are embedded into the Business Application Studio.
NoteWeb IDE for SAP HANA can also be used for modeling in SAP HANA Cloud, but is not recommended as it misses many additional productivity aids and features that supports the modeler. Web IDE will not be developed further and Business Application Studio will be the tool that receives all new features. SAP Business Application Studio is the recommended tool for data modeling in SAP HANA Cloud.