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martin_E
Active Contributor

Previous entries in this series

Does SAP really want NON SAP Developers ? 1

Does SAP really want NON SAP Developers ? 2

Remember our scenario? Alice is a non-SAP developer. She is familiar with web front-end development on both windows and Linux systems who wants to install the latest ABAP developer platform to learn about SAP, and even to develop something using the latest greatest SAP development tools – using API’s (ODATA / JSON / XML etc) and SAPs User Interface built on JQUERY (i.e. SAPUI5)

Remember that the latest non HANA system available is the "SAP NetWeaver Application Server ABAP 7.4 on SAP MaxDB - Trial Edition". There is no developer edition. Also, remember that Alice deliberately ignored the HANA version, because she is in Australia and the SAP Store tells her that the HANA Developer Studio is not available in Australia.

Alice has an SAP system up and running.

Now to clear something up. Remember how the'SAP GUI wasn't where the user guide said it should be ?

https://s3.amazonaws.com/notes.basissap.com/sdn/SAP-dev-98.png

Turns out it's in a different location. Doesn't matter, she's got a copy from me.

Now, some outstanding issues (Still)

Issue 22 Licensing

So Alice has a SAP GUI. First thing is to get the system licensed. But what is an SDN ID ? What is SDN ?

http://s3.amazonaws.com/notes.basissap.com/sdn/SAP-dev-61.png

I told her to use the P number from when she registered for the SAP Cloud

Now Alice has (finally) got her SAP system up and running. I tell her to look at transaction SPAM which will show full details of what her system has, and what it is capable of. But, of course, the first thing she sees is

https://s3.amazonaws.com/notes.basissap.com/sdn/SAP-dev-51.png

Ah well, it still lets us look at stuff. We can see exactly what her system has, and Gateway and UI5 are included…

https://s3.amazonaws.com/notes.basissap.com/sdn/SAP-dev-52.png

Issue 23 System Configuration

Before the system will work (such things as webdynpro and ICF), configuration is required. There's no instructions on what to do and how to do it; The only instructions given in the user guide are for ensuring that the hostname and domain are consistent. For other stuff, if you do full profile configuration (via transaction RZ10), you get the following screen.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/notes.basissap.com/sdn/SAP-dev-99.png

Issue 24 Not all SICF transactions are active

Ran RSICF_SERVICE_ACTIVATION via SE38

Issue 25 HTTPS is not enabled

https://s3.amazonaws.com/notes.basissap.com/sdn/SAP-dev-A1.png

The quick fix is available at Suppress "Protocol cannot be switched to HTTPS . Note that this doesn't implement HTTPS, it only gets rid of the ugly message :smile:

Maintenance and Patching

Remember that without a Maintenance Certificate, she can’t update Gateway, UI5 or even SAP itself. In fact even, with a Maintenance Certificate, there is another bunch of yaks to be shaved

https://s3.amazonaws.com/notes.basissap.com/sdn/SAP-dev-92.gif

To summarise;

Adding / updating / upgrading plugins, components, EHPs, etc

  • requires Solution Manager
  • Solution Manager requires a Service market Place user-id that is related to a  customer number and that has specific access criteria to the Software Download Centre of the Service Market Place
  • Downloading software via the Solution Manager requires a SAP Router
  • which requires a customer number

Installing Solution Manager

  • requires maintenance of Solution Manager (via the Software Download Centre of the Service Market Place)
  • which requires a SAP Router
  • which requires a customer number

Applying patches to repository or configuration data ….

  • Requires SNOTE
  • which requires a Service Market Place id related to a  customer number

Database and kernel patches don’t require Solution Manager, but they do require access to the Software Download Centre of the Service Market Place, which requires a Service Market Place id related to a customer number. The same requirement applies for access to http://service.sap.com/notes.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/notes.basissap.com/sdn/SAP-dev-91.png

This may be a blessing in disguise for Alice, but it doesn't help SAP get developers on board.

And we haven't even covered backup and log file management, disk space management in general, tuning of the operating system or database and so on.

Summary

By comparison, as mentioned elsewhere in this series, you can can get a web server up and running in 10 minutes with Ruby or Python by downloading and executing a file, then running the following command lines.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/notes.basissap.com/sdn/SAP-dev-90.png

That is the competition that SAP faces for Developers. Alice is no longer interested in SAP. She has found something else (anything else) that lets her start producing results now.

EDIT:

Thanks for making it this far, and thanks to everyone for the positive feedback, both here and in social media.

Please bear in mind that is NOT how I would go about installing a Developer / Trial ABAP system, and I wouldn't recommend this path through the labyrinth to anyone. The point of this series was how people NOT experienced with SAP products or naming conventions or SAP web sites or SAP UX, without a large network of fellow SAPPers, would see the process.

hth

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