Blog update 11/01/2010: podcast added!
Hey folks - the ten minute podcast I taped with Leo that goes along with this video blog is now up as well. It's a raw file, I even kept in the part where I butcher Leo's name in the intro, but I think Leo's immediate reactions to his ByD SDK session are worth hearing. I still need to post the writeup of the podcast to JonERP.com, but if you want to hear the podcast right away, you can either:
- use this embedded Quicktime player or
- download the podcast using the "download media" link to your right
Soon I'll add more text updates as well...scroll down for the video.
- Jon
For those of us leaving SAP TechEd Friday morning, it was a mad scramble to get out of town before President Obama flew in and wreaked a bit of Presidential Havoc on the airport. Nevertheless, I was determined to get in a Business ByDesign video and podcast session with fellow SAP Mentor and Certification 5 compadre Leonardo De Araujo. So determined that I got Thomas Jung's go ahead to pull Leo out of Thomas' jam-packed ABAP development hands-on where Leo was assisting Thomas with the aspiring coders along with the Enterprise Geeks.
Though many SAP Mentors are interested in ByDesign, a handful of us are in serious pursuit of information that connects ByD to our existing business models and expertise. Several ByD TechEd reactions from Mentors have already been shared, notably Dennis Howlett's reactions to his hands-on exposure to the SDK and Michael Koch's own SDK insights from TechEd Berlin.
In Leo's case, he is particularly interested in partnering opportunities with ByDesign, including application development. On Thursday, Leo attended a four hour ByD SDK hands-on session (the same one Dennis attended). The full session name, and this one is a mouthful, was: SAP Business ByDesign E2E Application Development Using Partner Development Infrastructure and SAP B... The session was taught by Kornelia Koch and Werner Wolf. After the session, Leo and I talked to Werner about some of the topics you will see in the video below.
Before we get to the video, I can give you the one takeaway that came out of the talk with Leo. Leo is a techno-functional ABAP expert, so he was very interested in how we would fare in the ByD development environment, which is derived from Microsoft Visual Studio and Microsoft C#. I had a similar interest, as I hear from many ABAPpers who want to break into ByD programming.
The short answer is yes, you can learn ByD development from the ABAP side without too much trouble. At this juncture, it looks like there will be two main entry points into ByD development: from the ABAP side and from the Microsoft tools side. The catch? Object-oriented skills will be essential for a quick ByD rampup.
There is a podcast Leo and I taped that gets into more detail - I will add it to this blog post soon. I'll also add the podcast to my JonERP iTunes feed. I had other ByD meetings at TechEd, including a couple of sessions with Jeff Stiles and Doug Merritt of SAP, so there will be more to report.
One thing I can say quickly about the talks with Jeff and Doug is that in the next few months, I expect there to be greater clarification on the pricing/ramp up options for third party partners/developers. All the Mentors Jeff and Doug met with, including myself, encouraged SAP to keep the financial barriers to ByD partner entry low (though other quality standards may need to be high). ByD is not going to come to market fruition without a thriving developer ecosystem, and I think everyone involved understands that. Now for the execution. But in the meantime, the video:
(by the way, if you notice Leo's eyes wander and a wink in the beginning of the video, that's because someone wandered into our room and temporarily distracted him from my burning questions. To this day, I'm not sure who this "mystery visitor" was).
Video Timestamp
:45 Leo's reactions: I really liked the hands-on SDK (version 2.5). I was surprised by the robustness of the solution. The example we used in the hands-on was realistic, and I could associate my previous ABAP experience with how things are done in ByDesign.
1:42 Leo: The ByD environment was a faster development process than ABAP. In the ByD environment, it was easy to quickly generate code you need.
2:00 What Leo learned about ramping up on ByD SDK from the ABAP side: you need the object-oriented background, but you don't need a Microsoft development background. I was told it was helpful to have the Microsoft C# experience, but I found it wasn't necessary for me to get up to speed in four hours. Object orientation is key, but ByD development is approachable from both the ABAP or the Microsoft development side.
3:00 Jon to Leo: what are partners going to need to get further involved in ByD development from here? Leo: what we need is access to the ByD systems and core. We need to work on these systems and figure out which functional opportunities there are to build on. Once we have access to the SDK, we need access to the ByD core to understand what areas we might want to extend or build on. Jon: And we also need to know from SAP what areas the existing customers are asking for, in terms of increased functionality.
4:00 Leo's final wraps on ByD from the TechEd week: After this week, I was pretty excited by what I saw. In Canada, we are behind on getting access to ByD releases but I hope to get on board as soon as possible.
video clarification: I think I referred to version 2.6 in the video, but the version used in all the ByD hands-on sessions was 2.5.
