Getting Started with SAP Business Application Studio Development Environment

Objectives

After completing this lesson, you will be able to:

  • Create and open SAP Business Application Studio projects
  • Access SAP Business Application Studio for application development on SAP BTP
  • Access SAP Business Application Studio via an additional entry point

Dev Spaces in SAP Business Application Studio

Usage scenario

Your company is planning to develop a set of cloud-based applications. For developing the application, you will be using SAP Business Application Studio as your development environment.

Dev Spaces in SAP Business Application Studio

SAP Business Application Studio is a cloud-based development environment that introduces some new concepts into the game while redefining long standing ones from other cloud development environments. This lesson aims to elaborate about the Development Space (dev space) concept.

Dev spaces are the essence of SAP Business Application Studio. They are fully-fledged development environments equipped with the runtimes and tools required for specific development scenarios. Each dev space is optimized for a specific development scenario. This means that it is delivered with a predefined set of tools we believe are required for this scenario.

A dev space can easily be created in the dev space manager. When your dev space is created, you have your environment up-and-running and you can start your development. There is no need to install additional tools or do some complex configurations, all you need is already preinstalled and preconfigured.

SAP Business Application Studio supports several SAP development scenarios, such as Cloud Applications, SAP Fiori UI development, and SAP HANA native.

The different tools and runtimes are available as extensions. Each extension can hold one or more tool and/or runtime. The content of each extension is mentioned in the extension description.

Creating and Opening Dev Spaces

When creating a new dev space, you are asked to select from various development scenarios (for example, dev space types). For each scenario, there is predefined list of extensions which are installed by default. On top of the predefined extensions that you can see on the left, you can optionally add more extensions from the Additional Extensions list on the right. While you can add an unlimited number of extensions to your dev space, you should keep in mind that the more you add, the longer it will take for your dev space to load. Therefore, only add the extensions that you really need.

Once you have chosen Create Dev Space, the SAP Business Application Studio will spin up a (kind of) private virtual machine for you, and install all the selected extensions into it. In a nutshell, under the hood, Kubernetes technology is used to provision and manage containers to create an isolated dev space. Once the dev space status turns to RUNNING, you can start your development.

Whenever you create a new dev space, the latest version of the selected extensions is installed. Extensions in existing dev spaces are updated automatically every time it is restarted, therefore making sure you always use the most up-to-date version of the tools.

Dev spaces are completely isolated from one another, there is no way to access the file system and processes of one dev space from another dev space, even if both are owned by the same user. This level of isolation, together with the containers approach, enables us to provide the long-requested terminal access, and the ability to run almost any command as if you are working on your own laptop.

Unlike your laptop, dev spaces are also disposable. If, for some reason, your dev space is messed up, you can always create a new one and easily move your projects to it by downloading them from the previous one and uploading them to the new one. Having your projects always in sync with their Git repositories, will make it even easier to switch between dev spaces.

To save on resources, dev spaces are stopped after 3 hours of inactivity (1 hour in Trial and free-tier). Don’t worry, your dev space, including all the files it contained, will be restored once you start the dev space again. However, processes like applications, or jobs you were running during your development, will have to be restarted manually.

Dev spaces will be preserved as long as your subscription to SAP Business Application Studio is in place and of course, if not explicitly deleted.

You can create up to 10 dev spaces and have 2 of them running at the same time. In trial and free-tier accounts, there is a limitation to a total of two dev spaces and only one running at a time.

Use SAP Business Application Studio for the First Time

Business Scenario

In this exercise, we will finalize the set up of accounts with the tools and services needed to get you started for developing applications on SAP Business Technology Platform. Take note that we will use a single subaccount for development (design time), as well as for deployment (runtime). In real-world scenarios, design-time and runtime environments are typically managed separately to reduce operational costs.

In this exercise, you will perform the following tasks:

  • Open SAP Business Application Studio.
  • Create a New Dev Space.
  • Create an SAP HANA Database for Your Application.
Note

In this exercise, we will be creating a new subaccount. It is also possible to apply the required configuration steps to an existing subaccount. However, to keep things clean and separated from other activities, we recommend creating a separate subaccount for this learning journey.

Prerequisites

Details on the prerequisites for setting up an account on SAP Business Application Studio for application development is covered in this lesson.

Note

Depending on whether you are using a Trial Account, Free-Tier, or an Enterprise Account, the options available might differ. If you are using an Enterprise Account you will have access to all options. If you are using a Trial or Free-Tier Account, you will find that some options are not available. In those cases watch the simulation.

Context

As discussed earlier in this lesson, you will be using a booster to set up a new subaccount for developing applications on SAP Business Application Studio. The setup environment however, will only enable you to design and preview your applications. You will have to subscribe to additional entitlements and services to be able to deploy your application.

Note

Note that some of the services that this learning journey links to, can incur costs.

If you are concerned about charges, you can opt to skip the corresponding exercises and watch the simulation instead.

Note

If you are using a Trial Account the booster described in task 1 will not be available as SAP Business Application Studio is available by default. In this case, continue with task 2.

Note
In this exercise, it is recommended to save your work more often than requested in the substeps.

Let's get started.

Exercise Options

You can perform this exercise in two ways:

  1. Live Environment: by using the instructions provided below, you can perform the steps in your SAP BTP account.
  2. Platform Simulation: follow the step-by-step instructions within the simulation.
Note
We strongly recommend to perform the steps in the live environment first.

The following simulation reproduces the full exercise execution:

ExerciseStart Exercise

Task 1: Open SAP Business Application Studio From the New Subaccount

Steps

  1. Find and open the URL to SAP Business Application Studio.

    1. You are now in the overview page of your newly created subaccount. Notice the space (by default Dev that was created for you). From the navigation pane on the left, choose Instances and Subscriptions.

    2. In the Subscriptions list, you will see a link to the SAP Business Application Studio. Choosing this link will bring you to the entry point of the SAP Business Application Studio.

    3. From the home page, you can create a cloud-based development environment (called dev space) and start developing apps. The home page only opens, if you haven’t created any dev spaces yet. If there are already existing dev-spaces the dev space manager will open, where you can create new dev spaces or access already existing ones. The details will be handled in the next lesson. As mentioned earlier, at this point the environment setup allows you to develop and preview your applications, but you will not be able to deploy them. Proceed to the next steps to add additional entitlements and subscriptions for deployment.

Task 2: Create a New Dev Space in SAP Business Application Studio

Steps

  1. Create a new dev space.

    Use the following data:

    FieldValue
    Name(of your choice, for example:) RisksManagmentDevSpace

    1. From the home-page of SAP Business Application Studio or Dev Space's manager, choose Create Dev Space.

    2. Enter a name for the dev space (for example, RisksManagmentDevSpace).

    3. Choose the Full Stack Application Using Productivity Tools type.

    4. Choose Create Dev Space.

    5. Wait until the dev space status becomes Running.

    6. Open the dev space by choosing dev space name link.

    7. Wait for the SAP Business Application Studio to come to an end.

      You will see a notification on the lower right side with the text We have finished installing all tools and templates for you, enjoy your work!)

      Note

      By default SAP Business Application Studio opens with a dark theme. For better readability we use a light theme in this Learning Journey. You can adapt the themes by selecting the Manage button on the lower right side of your screen. Then choose Themes and Color Theme. This will open a list where you can select which theme you would like to use.

Task 3: Create an SAP HANA Database for Your Application

Steps

  1. Log on to your Cloud Foundry account.

    1. Open SAP Business Application Studio.

    2. Find the Hamburger icon in the menu on the left side of the screen. Select View and then select Command Palette.

    3. Select CF: Login to Cloud Foundry.

    4. Provide the API endpoint to your account.

      This is located in the overview page of your BTP subaccount.

    5. Select authentication method as SSO Passcode.

    6. Choose the link open a new browser page to generate your SSO passcode.

    7. Sign in with the appropriate identity provider, and copy the Temporary Authentication Code.

    8. Enter the Temporary Authentication Code as SSO Passcode.

    9. Choose Sign in.

    10. Select the organization and the space.

    11. Choose Apply.

  2. Create an SAP HANA Database for your application.

    1. Find the Hamburger icon in the menu on the left side of the screen. Select Terminal and then select New Terminal.

      This opens the Terminal window.

    2. Paste the following script into the terminal.

      For trial:

      cf create-service hana-cloud-trial hana learningdb -c '{ "data": {"memory": 30, "systempassword": "<your_password>"}}'
      Note

      Replace <your_password> with a password of your choice.

      For free-tier:

      cf create-service hana-cloud hana-free learningdb -c '{ "data": {"memory": 32, "systempassword": "<yourpassword>"}}'

    3. Choose Enter.

      This executes the script.

    4. Navigate to your SAP BTP subaccount and choose Services, followed by Instances and Subscriptions. You can follow the progress of the HANA database creation here.

      Note

      For trial account users:

      1. Once the database is created, navigate to your Subscriptions, and choose SAP HANA Cloud. You can see your created HANA database here as well.
      2. Select More and choose Manage Configuration.
      3. Navigate to the Connections tab and select Allow all IP addresses. Choose Review and Save.
      4. In the confirmation dialog box, choose Save Changes with Restart.
      5. Now for the changes to take effect, select More for your HANA database and choose Stop.
      6. Once the status of the database shows Stopped, select More and choose Start.

        Wait for the status to change to Running, before proceeding.

      7. After 2 hours idle time on a trial account, the SAP HANA Database will be deactivated. In this case, it has to be started again before the app can run. To do this, repeat steps i (1) and vi (6).

  3. Review that all instances have been subscribed.

    1. Assuming the HANA Cloud Database instance has been successfully set up, in the subscriptions overview, you should now have:

      • Continuous Integration & Delivery.
      • SAP Business Application Studio.
      • SAP Build Work Zone.
      • SAP HANA Cloud.

    2. In the instances overview, you should now have instances of the services:

      • Continuous Integration & Delivery (not available in trial).
      • SAP HANA Cloud Database.

An Additional Entry Point to SAP Business Application Studio (Optional)

The SAP Build Lobby

The SAP Build Lobby is a central page for creating, accessing, and managing your SAP Build projects. No matter, if they are SAP Build Apps, SAP Build Process Automation, or SAP Build Work Zone projects. In addition, it is possible to create a full-stack application using the productivity toolkit from SAP Business Application Studio.

The following features are available in the SAP Build Lobby:

Quick Start
for creating a new sample project.
Create
for creating a new project.
Deploy
deploy your project to a runtime environment.
Share
collaborate with other developers.

Summary

To sum up, the dev space is a key concept at the heart of SAP Business Application Studio. It brings a new development experience with a new range of capabilities. New development scenarios are coming up soon, as well as advanced features around dev space handling. As an additional entry point, the SAP Build Lobby allows you to manage your projects, create, and access existing ones directly.

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