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  • Devtoberfest 2024 Recap // Week 1

Devtoberfest 2024 Recap // Week 1

23rd to 27th of September

October 04, 2024

What is SAP Devtoberfest? It is an annual, community-driven event that takes place every October leading up to SAP TechEd. It's a free, virtual gathering designed to equip developers with the latest skills in SAP technologies while fostering a sense of community. The event features a blend of technical sessions, hands-on workshops, coding challenges, and interactive games.

This Recap will give a brief overview of its sessions and their topics. The sessions can be grouped into four categories: 🟢 ABAP & CAP; 🟣 Tooling; 🔴 Integration; 🔵 Machine Learning, AI and Data; 🟠 Frontend. Session titles will link to the recoding of the session.

Personal favorites are marked with ✨.

Monday

🟢 ABAP & CAP

✨ Clean Core Extensibility with ABAP Cloud in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition

This session covers the use of ABAP Cloud to build cloud-ready applications, the importance of wrapping non-released SAP objects for cloud development, and a demo on creating and managing classifications for materials via classic APIs.

Key Takeaways: ABAP Cloud enables clean, cloud-optimized extensions across SAP S/4HANA editions. The three-tier extensibility model is critical for managing SAP's API layers. Governance is essential when using non-released objects in development.

This session describes and discusses the three extensibility options to build cloud ready extensions: Developer extensibility, key user extensibility and side-by-side extensibility.

Key Takeaways: Keep the core system clean by using the three options of the S/4HANA extensibility model. Avoid modifications.

This session introduces TypeScript in the context of SAP CAP and explains its benefits.

Key Takeaways: TypeScript is a superset of JavaScript that adds static types, reducing runtime errors. CAP apps can use TypeScript during development, transpiling it to Javascript for deployment.

This session is covering the creation of analytical apps using ABAP and SAP´s new embedded analytics features.

Key Takeaways: Embedded analytics is the way to go for real-time analysis, building a CDS-based star schema. A new MDA generator simplifies the creation of analytical apps.

This session explains how to integrate external data sources into ABAP Cloud systems, demonstrating SQL-based integration methods like data federation and replication.

Key Takeaways: SQL services and CDS external entities allow secure and seamless access to external data sources from ABAP. The underlying technology is HANA Smart Data Access (SDA).

This session describes how to create partner products - a software solution developed by SAP partners - in BTP ABAP Environment to be used by its customers. It is focusing on best practices, system setup and extensibility options.

Key Takeaways: Partner products are side-by-side apps in the ABAP Environment. They can either be deployed as a multi-tenant SaaS solution or an installable product.

Tuesday and Wednesday

🟣 Tooling

This session covers a real-world invoice approval process in S/4HANA using SAP Build Process Automation. It demonstrates how automation can streamline and optimize the approval workflow for invoices.

Key Takeaways: SAP Build Process Automation significantly improves the efficiency of the invoice approval process. It integrates seamlessly with S/4HANA to handle complex approval workflows and exception handling

This session focuses on transforming data with JavaScript in SAP Build Process Automation, introducing the new script task feature, which enables advanced data manipulation directly within workflows.

Key Takeaways: The script task feature allows executing JavaScript for complex data transformations in SAP Build. A new script editor with IntelliSense, error handling, and isolated code execution helps developers test and debug code before deployment. Common use cases include array iteration, string manipulation, and fetching business approval statuses

❗️ The moderators confirmed that the Script Task will be available “in two weeks”, which should be around mid of October ‘24. This is important news considering the old Workflow Management Service won´t be available anymore from February ‘25 and this was a critical task missing until now1 .

This session walks through developing a full-stack CAP (Cloud Application Programming) application using SAP Build Code, demonstrating the creation, deployment, and integration of both frontend and backend components.

Key Takeaways: SAP Build Code simplifies full-stack development, integrating backend services with CAP and frontend tools while adding AI capabilities for code generation.​

Develop with SAP Build Apps Like a Pro

This session explores how to develop with SAP Build Apps like a pro, focusing on structuring projects, improving maintainability, and adopting best practices for professional app development.

Key Takeaways: Structure is crucial for scalable, maintainable projects, even in no-code environments. Naming conventions for components and variables improve clarity and collaboration. Reusable components and logic help avoid repetition and facilitate future changes. Versioning now allows tracking and rollback of app changes.

🔴 Integration

This session introduces CPILint, an open-source tool for automating governance in SAP Cloud Integration. It helps ensure compliance with naming conventions, security policies, and best practices by automatically checking integration flows.

Key Takeaways: CPILint automates compliance checks for SAP Cloud Integration, reducing manual errors. It supports multiple rules like naming conventions, adapter restrictions, and duplicate detection. The tool integrates easily into CI/CD pipelines for continuous monitoring of integration flows​

This session introduces CPI-Helper, a browser extension designed to speed up SAP Cloud Integration development by enhancing functionality and simplifying debugging and trace management.

Key Takeaways: CPI-Helper reduces development time by integrating debugging, trace, and monitoring features directly into the SAP Cloud Integration UI. The tool consolidates multiple tabs into one, improving efficiency with features like error tracing, message logs, and variable handling. It has a large, active user base and supports Chrome, Edge, and Firefox, with community-driven plugin support for extended functionality

FlashPipe - Your CI/CD Companion for SAP Integration Suite

This session introduces FlashPipe, a CI/CD companion tool for SAP Integration Suite that automates deployment, testing, and artifact management using a command-line interface (CLI) and Docker.

Key Takeaways: FlashPipe automates CI/CD processes for SAP Integration Suite, supporting GitHub, Azure DevOps, and Jenkins. It allows seamless syncing, deploying, and testing of integration artifacts across environments. FlashPipe supports Groovy script development offline with unit testing and integration flow management

Thursday and Friday

🔵 Machine Learning, AI and Data

This session discusses how using knowledge graphs in SAP BTP improves the performance of Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) by enhancing context understanding and accuracy.

Key Takeaways: Knowledge graphs help overcome limitations of naive RAG. They provide precise and context-rich answers. Complex extraction and creation of knowledge graphs can be challenging​

This session covers the integration of popular SAP BW features into SAP Datasphere, including language-dependent texts, currency conversion, time dependencies, and more, showing how to leverage these features in analytics.

Key Takeaways: SAP Datasphere integrates key SAP BW features like language-dependent texts, currency conversion, and time dependencies. Hierarchies, non-cumulative key figures, and calculated/restricted measures are supported. SAP Datasphere offers business content and community content for rapid deployment of analytic models

This session introduces Agents using SAP Generative AI Hub, showcasing how AI agents interact autonomously with systems and tools to perform tasks based on user requests.

Key Takeaways: AI agents operate autonomously, interacting with various systems to complete multi-step tasks. SAP Generative AI Hub provides orchestration services to integrate different tools and APIs. Agents use large language models (LLMs) to dynamically respond to requests, enhancing automation across multiple SAP systems

This session explains how to build an orchestration workflow using SAP Generative AI Hub, focusing on how to combine AI models, prompts, and data handling for seamless automation.

Key Takeaways: The orchestration service enables building complex AI workflows using pre-built modules (e.g., grounding, prompt templating, data masking). It provides a unified API for different AI models, allowing easy switching between providers like OpenAI and Google. Additional features like data masking and content filtering ensure data privacy and compliance​

🟠 Frontend

This session introduces SAP Fiori Tools Preview Middleware, demonstrating how it simplifies application maintenance by automatically providing up-to-date best practices for front-end tests and Fiori Launchpad setups without needing manual code updates.

Key Takeaways: Preview Middleware removes obsolete glue code, reducing manual maintenance. It automatically provides best practice configurations for SAP Fiori Launchpad and test setups. The middleware ensures apps remain up-to-date with SAP's best practices without manual intervention

This session demonstrates how to develop a UI5 Freestyle application using TypeScript from start to finish, covering key development practices like error handling, testing, and project setup.

Key Takeaways: TypeScript improves error detection, code completion, and maintainability in UI5 projects. The session includes building an app, integrating a CAP server, and adding third-party libraries (e.g., Chart.js). Debugging, testing (unit, integration, system), and best practices for TypeScript in UI5 are thoroughly covered

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