Storyboard for cloud business applications using CAP in SAP Business Application Studio

In the last release of SAP Business Application Studio, we released the first version of a new tool – the Storyboard!

The Storyboard is a detailed graphical view for CAP applications that presents their logical components and the connections between them.

The storyboard, together with the application explorer for CAP (which was also enhanced in the last release), helps you develop large parts of your application using modeling and graphical editors.

To open the Storyboard, open the context menu on the root of the application in the application explorer:

A command to open the Storyboard is also available from the command palette.

Let’s go over the storyboard’s main capabilities and advantages:

• A graphical view of the data models, services, and UI front ends of the application, as well as the connections between them.
  
  Using the storyboard is the best way to get a quick understanding of the application’s structure and components.You can move, zoom in and out, and expand and collapse single objects or all objects at once.

  You can also filter objects to focus on the application components that are relevant for you.

  

• Integration with graphical editors and wizards
  
  You can develop a significant part of the application using graphical tools and wizards.
  
  Create and edit CDS data models and services:
  • You can create a new data model or service from the toolbar or from the application explorer.
    
  • The CDS graphical modeler is used to edit new or existing data models.
  • You can open the CDS graphical modeler for editing from the namespace or service edit buttons, or from the application explorer.

  To learn more on the CDS graphical modeler see the documentation.

• Create an SAP Fiori elements UI
  
  You can create an SAP FE application using the wizard. Open it from the toolbar or from the application explorer.
  You can read more about creating the UI front-end in my previous blog post.
• Consume external services
  
  Add and consume external services using the SAP Consume Services tool, that can be opened from the application explorer.

  
  The data model of the external service is presented on the canvas with a different color and cannot be edited.

  

• Expose the data model as a service
  
  You can select a data model and, with one click, expose it via a new service.
• Open in Code Editor
  
  Once you have finished working in the storyboard, you can easily navigate to the code from the application explorer.
  

I hope you enjoyed reading this blog post 🙂

To get more information on SAP Business Application Studio, check out the info blog

We would be very interested to hear your input, so feel free to add your comments below or send us ideas

Happy coding!