Introducing SAP Build Code

In the current business technology landscape, companies are facing a significant challenge: On one hand, there is an increasing demand for new applications and cloud-based solutions. On the other hand, there is a critical shortage of skilled IT professionals. Already today, there are many vacant positions for IT professionals. And the number is still growing. IDC predicts that in 2026, 9 out of 10 organizations will be affected by missing IT skills (IT Skills Shortage Expected to Impact Nine out of Ten Organizations by 2026 with a Cost of $5.5 Trillion in Delays, Quality Issues and Revenue Loss, According to IDC).

This is a dramatic situation that is worsened because many development professionals report that they spend only a small part of their working time with application development. Many developers know situations like the one shown in the following image: Instead of writing code, they are thinking about tons of other questions. IDC reports that professional developers spend less than 20% of their time developing applications (IDC, Market Analysis Perspective: Worldwide Modern and Edge Application Development and Developer Trends 2023, Doc #US50135723, September 2023). They spend the rest of their time on other tasks including testing, implementing CI/CD, doing application and infrastructure performance management, and security.

Developer tools address this gap offering capabilities to increase the developer efficiency including generative AI-based code development with natural language input, expedited access to APIs, integrated CI/CD and security functionality, automation of software development and deployment, and collaboration capabilities (Source: IDC, Market Analysis Perspective: Worldwide Modern and Edge Application Development and Developer Trends 2023, Doc #US50135723, September 2023).

As outlined before, enhancing developer productivity is a crucial task. SAP Build Code is SAP’s turn-key environment for coding, testing, integrations, and application lifecycle management offering many capabilities to increase developer efficiency. It includes the following unique combination of features:

AI-powered assistance

SAP Build Code provides AI-powered assistance that helps developers build their applications faster and more efficiently. This assistance includes among others generating code and app logic, data models, and test scripts.

Prebuilt components and templates

SAP Build Code provides various prebuilt components and templates based on best practices that developers can use to accelerate their applications. These components include UI elements, business logic, and integrations. The following screenshot shows templates available for project creation.

Clean Core Strategy

SAP Build Code helps to keep core ERP systems (like SAP S/4HANA) free from customizations. With SAP Build Code, custom developments and extensions are built on the SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) in accordance with SAP's ERP clean core strategy. This approach ensures an easily upgradable and stable core system. (See Managing Clean Core for SAP S/4HANA Cloud and Practicing Clean Core Extensibility for SAP S/4HANA Cloud for further information on clean core extensibility.)

Cloud-based development

SAP Build Code is a fully cloud-based solution, so developers can access it from anywhere using an internet connection.

Optimized for SAP software development

SAP Build Code is tailored for SAP development and comes with prebuilt integrations, APIs, and business services. It is built on SAP BTP, and benefits from many proven SAP BTP capabilities including trusted security.

Visual programming tools and guided wizards

SAP Build Code offers lots of productivity tools increasing efficiency and ensuring adherence to the best practices and guidance outlined in the SAP BTP Developer's Guide.

SAP Build Code is a powerful tool that is built on SAP BTP. It incorporates numerous proven SAP software capabilities providing design and runtime features.

Here is a list of some of the services included in SAP Build Code:

• Application Services
  • The SAP Cloud Application Programming Model (CAP) is a framework to create enterprise services and applications. Offering out-of-the-box solutions for many recurring tasks and guidance based on proven best practices it optimizes the development experience.
  • UI Development:
    • SAPUI5 provides a rich set of user interface controls and a framework for building responsive web applications, ensuring a high-quality, consistent user experience across various devices and platforms.
    • SAP Fiori elements is a framework offering a collection of standard floorplans for developing consistent, scalable, and easy-to-maintain SAP Fiori applications. While SAPUI5 serves as the foundational frontend technology, SAP Fiori elements simplifies the creation of a standardized, yet customizable, user interface aligned with SAP's Fiori design guidelines.
    • SAP Web Components are reusable enterprise-ready UI components for consumption with SAPUI5 or any other web development framework.
  • SAP Mobile Services supports developing, configuring, and managing native and cross-platform mobile apps. It provides a range of features and tools supporting the entire mobile application lifecycle. It is complemented by several development tools such as the native software development kits (SDKs) for iOS, Android, the mobile development kit or SAP Mobile Cards.
  • SAP Document Management provides functionalities for managing and storing various types of business documents and attachments.
• Runtime Services
  • The SAP Continuous Integration and Delivery allows you to automate and simplify the application developmentprocess by configuring and running predefined CI/CD pipelines for automated building, testing and deploying of code changes. It enables developers to deliver code changes quickly and reliably.
  • The SAP Authorization and Trust Management service helps you to manage user authorizations and trust to identity providers.
  • The SAP Event Broker for SAP cloud applications helps you to manages the distribution of events in the SAP cloud landscape.
  • The Application Autoscaler automatically scales applications based on the policies you have defined.
  • The SAP Alert Notification service allows you to get notifications about SAP BTP resources, services, and custom apps.
  • The SAP Cloud Logging service is a service for storing, visualizing, and analyzing application logs, metrics, and traces from SAP BTP Cloud Foundry, Kyma, Kubernetes and other runtime environments.
  • The SAP Cloud Transport Management service allows you to manage application transport and content transport within a landscape on SAP BTP.
  • The SAP Connectivity service allows for seamless connectivity between cloud applications and on-premise systems.
  • With the SAP Destination service you can retrieve and store technical information about the destination you want to connect your application to.
  • The SAP Feature Flags Service allows for the dynamic enabling and disabling of application features.

The following use cases can be covered using SAP Build Code. They cater for all main scenarios in SAP environments.

1. SAP Build Code is designed to extend SAP solutions. It is significantly simplifying the process of creating and extending apps, offering developers out-of-the-box code templates that adhere to SAP best practices.
2. With SAP Build Code, developers can easily build and extend SAP Fiori and SAPUI5 applications using predefined extension points and adapt the user interface of SAP Fiori elements applications.
3. For mobile application development, SAP Build Code enables a high-control environment, where developers can create, test, build and deploy hybrid mobile apps. Additionally, it supports codeless, metadata-driven application development and leverage mobile services integration for a seamless experience.
4. When it comes to developing SAP HANA Native applications. SAP Build Code provides all the necessary tools to create SAP HANA application projects or add SAP HANA DB modules to existing projects. It supports the creation and deployment of a variety of SAP HANA artifacts with tools including an SQL editor, a calculation view graphical editor, a flow graph graphical editor, and a database explorer.
5. Finally, SAP Build Code allows you to easily develop and extend multi-tenant SaaS applications. Enabling multitenancy provides significant benefits, including reduced costs, increased scalability, and improved security.

In essence, SAP Build Code equips developers with a robust, versatile environment to build sophisticated, high-performance applications within the SAP ecosystem.

SAP Build Code introduces AI code generation with the Joule copilot, enhancing the development process by providing intelligent, automated coding assistance including using natural language descriptions to generate the application logic.

Joule acts as a copilot supporting you in several steps of your development process:

1. You can use natural language to describe your use case. Joule generates the data model and service entities based on your input. In addition, contextual sample data is created based on your prompt.
2. It is possible to edit your project’s data model and services and the sample data with Joule.
3. You can use Joule to add an application logic.
4. Joule also helps you to generate and run unit tests.
5. It is possible to create an SAP Fiori UI application with the help of Joule.

To find out how to create a full-stack application with SAP Fiori UI using Joule in SAP Build Code follow this tutorial.

For further information about Joule we recommend the following:

• Joule Documentation
• Joule Community

SAP Build Code is for both professional developers and business experts. By sharing application components such as user experience, business logic, and processes it helps both user groups to be more productive by working together. It is part of the SAP Build family, giving developers the choice of SAP Build low-code, SAP Build Code for Java/JavaScript, and ABAP environment for application and extension development. SAP Build Code secures the collaboration between different users with a unified governance and a simplified application lifecycle management.

Joule acts as a copilot and offers various benefits that speed up and optimize the development process.

In essence, SAP Build Code is more than just a development tool - it is a productivity enhancer that empowers developers to build applications that are robust and dynamic. With SAP Build Code you can:

• Achieve a clean core by developing side-by-side extensions with SAP Build Code on SAP BTP.
• Optimize developer efficiency with generative AI, productivity tools, and application lifecycle management.
• Build and extend powerful end-to-end business applications.
• Leverage interoperability between classic development and low-code development tools.