My Old Wishes for SAP in 2018

This blog post is just a bunch of things I would like to see SAP doing in 2018. I invite you to do the same in your expertise area.

 

2018 has just started! Why not revealing my wishes for SAP in 2018? I do have many of them (124  to be precise). Wishes are separated in broad expertise areas.

 

I wish…

 

ABAP

1 – ABAP in SAP Cloud Platform becomes available and easily accessible for those who would like to give it a try.

 

2 – CDS to have a better documentation, specially when it comes to define what is the result for each annotation

 

3 – External Views to have better support for database types like VARCHAR, BIGINT, DATE, etc and to have that back-ported in all NetWeaver versions which are currently under maintenance

 

4 – BOPF to be back-ported in all NetWeaver versions which are currently under maintenance

 

5 – BOPF gets a better documentation with simple and complex examples

 

6 – ABAP Push Channels to be back-ported as well

 

7 – CL_SALV_TABLE becomes obsolete for real OR gets updated to include overly-requested features like edit mode

 

8 – SE80 / Eclipse to have a better code completion.

 

9 – The default eclipse ABAP perspective to be more useful

 

10 – Eclipse get rid of the “System Packages” option which just lists the first 1000 standard packages (almost all starting with /)

 

11 – SE16N and SE16H transactions to be moved to a “core” package so they’re available in other systems as well

 

12 – It becomes worthwhile creating unit tests in ABAP (it lacks support for mocking) – I doubt 1% of customers do it regularly in custom developments

 

13 – It becomes clear the future role and direction of ABAP persistent classes and if there is no future to be announced

 

14 – Web IDE to become a possible IDE to be used

 

15 – ABAPGit releases many new features (why not be included as part of the switch framework?)

 

SAP Gateway

 

16 – SEGW transaction gets a “refresh” button to update all ABAP artefacts changed while it’s open

 

17 – SEGW transaction enable service generation for oData V4 services.

 

18 – SEGW transaction enable service generation based on normal global classes

 

19 – SEGW transaction to show warnings in yellow and errors in red. There are a few situations today that error are displayed in yellow.

 

20 – SEGW transaction to enable renaming a project

 

21 – SEGW transaction to enable changing a project type

 

SAP NetWeaver

22 – SAP Netweaver trial to be delivered BEFORE each new Netweaver version be released to customers

 

23 – SAP Netweaver trial not to request licenses renewal

 

24 – SAP Netweaver trial to have an effortless installation both on premise and on cloud

 

25 – SAP Web IDE to be provided as part of SAP NetWeaver

 

Fiori

26 – SAP delivers more apps for customers without HANA (will SAP keep negligent about this for 7 more years?)

 

27 -Fiori Apps Reference library stop calling ABAP programs “Fiori apps” – Read more about the Fiori Lie Detector

 

28 – Less effort in useless stuff like the recent Analysis tool announced in SCN and more effort in the items

 

29 – Fiori Launchpad Designer (On premise) to have a decent Icon selector which enables filtering and seeing icon’s name

 

30 – Fiori Launchpad Designer ASKS for a workbench/customizing request each time a new Catalog/Group/Tile/Target Mapping is created instead of remembering your last selection

 

31 – Fiori Launchpad Designer (On premise) to look like the one available as part of Fiori Portal service in CP

 

32 – All cache bugs to be fixed and all /UI2*CACHE* programs to RIP

 

33 – Fiori Theme Designer to be way faster (on premise and cloud)

 

34 – Fiori Theme Designer to be delivered as an NPM module

 

35 – Fiori Launchpad to be open sourced

 

36 – Public sites to be available in Fiori Portal service in CP

 

SAPUI5 / OpenUI5

37 – Less delta between SAPUI5 and OpenUI5 – in other words, open source APF, Fiori Elements, SAP Viz, etc

 

38 – Any developer to be able to generate the complete UI5 documentation including Developer Guide and API reference. It does not work as described here and here

 

39 – Documentation to be available in devdocs

 

40 – More detailed documentation about how to contribute to the library (the purpose of each tool and important file)

 

41 – Some controls to be back ported when feasible

 

42 – Documentation to allow “comments” so people can post more examples themselves in any page

 

43 – Better documentation on Overview Pages, giving detailed examples about each card type and other important topics like variant management and filtering

 

44 – There are webinars presented by the UI5 team on a regular basis

 

BUILD

45 – BUILD becomes open source again (GitHub repository was completely forgotten)

 

46 – There is a commercial plan for individuals/startups with a feasible price

 

47 – SAP BUILD service to be part of any SAP Cloud Platform license and in any region

 

48 – Removes the “limitation” of 5 active projects (when in the end it does not limit anything as it’s possible to “archive” projects and “unarchive” them later

 

49 – SAP BUILD has an option to export the project using a specific SAPUI5 version

 

50 – Prototypes and studies to be accessed anonymously if desired

 

51 – Questions which answers are set to “by performing an action” to be automatically “done” as soon as the user does the action (example, clicking a button or navigating to a specific page)

 

52 – A theme cloud be imported into the prototype (this feature does exists but it’s a mystery how it works fine – always seems to be incompatible with the theme uploaded)

 

53 – A real web service can be consumed inside a prototype

 

54 – I could select templates which are available in a specific release. For example: it does not make sense to prototype an Overview Page if I am in Fiori 1.0. BUILD is assuming that its user have deep UI5 and Fiori knowledge.

 

55 – A project can have multiple prototypes to do A/B testing for example

 

SAP Web IDE

56 – There were an option to “beautify” an xml file like this

<Button
    text="Press me"
    icon="sap-icon://add"
    press="onAdd">

</Button>

 

57 – There are more templates

 

58 – The git client and log are not so limited and have less bugs

 

59 – It is possible to use a yeoman generator to create a new project

 

60 – It is possible to simply rename a root folder

 

61 – Annotation editor could work with no connection with the back end service

 

62 – Outline worked fine

 

63 – manifest.json editor could rename UI5 routes properly

 

64 – manifest.json editor includes fields for important metadata information like root view, router class and ovp cards

 

65 – Regular Web IDE is merged with Full Stack Web IDE

 

SAP HANA

66 – Fiori Launchpad Designer to be available in HANA 2.0 (and in HXE as well) instead of making each developer figure out how a JSON file can make magic happens

 

67 – Fiori Theme Designer to be delivered as a MTA app in HANA 2.0

 

68 – XS CLI to be open source

 

69 – There is a connector for Google Data Studio is implemented

 

70 – Tutorials on how to integrate payment gateway in HANA to enable/disable users

 

71 -Announce features and tools which are far from ready as “beta” – Fiori is a good example of that

 

72 – SAP HANA could trend like redis in sites like StackShare

 

SAP Cloud Platform

 

73 – It is possible to create HANA 2.0 instances in its trial version

 

74 – Trial region to have less timeout errors – specially in Services tab

 

75 – Gamification service to be part of any license

 

76 – HCPms to be cheaper or have different licensing models

 

OpenSAP

 

77 – More courses for specific SAP Cloud Platform services (workflow, tax service, etc)

 

78 – Arduino/Raspberry course

 

79 – SAPUI5 advanced course

 

80 ABAP CDS course

 

81 – BOPF course

 

82 – BRF+ course

 

83 – SAP Open Source Projects course

 

84 – SFSF **practical** course

 

85 Hybris **practical** course

 

86 – Ariba **practical** course

 

87 – Concour **practical** course

 

88 – Leonardo **practical** course

 

89 – Increate the rate of people who finish a course – I am sure many people give up as soon as they lose a week test

 

 

SAP Support

90 – All SAP support team to focus in solving Customer/Partner issue and not in SLAs

 

91 – support.sap.com portal to have less outages (planned and unplanned)

 

92 – support.sap.com to be faster and include different filtering options

 

93 – Publish SAP Notes publicly (without requesting for an S-user)

 

94 – Publish Downloads publicly (without requesting for an S-user) – Why on Earth do I need an S-User to download SAP GUI? What someone could do with it alone?

 

95 – There is a program which suggests SAP notes to be installed based on your version (and obviously that install them automatically)

 

96 – There is no more manual notes, just use something smarter

 

SAP Education

97 – Official courses have a affordable price (10+ minimum wages for a basis ABAP course is not considerable affordable anywhere in the world)

 

98 – Anyone anywhere could try to take a certification exam without having to:

• do an official course beforehand
• waiting SAP certification day

 

99 – SAP rename the certification day in Brazil to “in-the-law day” (without doing this any day represents a tile-in sale, which is considered illegal in Brazil). In other words, someone must buy a course in order to be eligible to take a certification exam – which is another sale). Certification day is done two or three days each year in less than 6 capitals.

 

100 – I can take ANY certification exam in my country

 

101 – Learning hub can offer cheaper prices for those who are not interested in **all** content provided by it (aka everybody)

 

102 – SAP Education team don’t be pissed of with SAP Mentors who are teachers in training companies which are not SAP Education partners

 

SAP Mentor Program

103 – Plan more activities for kids, schools and universities

 

104 – Engage smaller initiatives in pairs or small groups

 

105 – Record SAP Mentor monthly meetings

 

106 – People who really deserves to be mentors to become mentors

 

SAP Startup Focus Program

107 – Announce which startups “succeeded” or are “going well” since the start of the program

 

Events

108 – Developer track is back in SAP Forum

 

109 – There is a SAP TechEd in Palo Alto and Sao Leopoldo

 

110 – SAP Inside Tracks to have awesome talks

 

111 – Local meetups to be organised more than ever!

 

SAP Community

112 – SAP threads/questions were 100% moved to StackExchange and retired from SAP Community

 

113 – SAP to be more creative when it comes to convicing people to return to the community

 

114 – Linked profiles recent feature take a step further and enable **merging** profiles

 

115 – Gamification to be back, for real

 

116 – The community could moderate content

 

117 – Downvotes were allowed in blog posts

 

118 – Tags were not handled as categories nor were organised based on language

 

119 – Search could work just once

 

120 – There is a SAP Community mobile app

 

SSO

121 – We are in 2018, is it too early to implement this properly

 

Innovations

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THIS ONE IS MY MAIN WISH

122 – Last but not least, I wish SAP team could create an internal/external Kaggle Team which objective was to join competitions using only SAP products in order to win.

Is HANA, CP, BW, Vora, PAL, SAP PA, Lumira, etc enough to win Kaggle competitions? If they are, why not showing this to the world? (if succeeded) This could generate great use cases for huge potential customers.

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What are your wishes?

123 – I really wish at least one SAP employee responsible for each topic above could read this post and comment on each relevant item.

 

124 – I wish to know your wishes!

 

So, I invite you to write your own blog post (or add a comment below) with your wishes for 2018.

 

Happy new year. Definitely, we all have lots of stuff to work on.