SAP S/4 HANA and No ABAP?
This question was bugging me for a considerable time - you are planning to migrate from in house SAP to S/4 HANA and you want to use the native solution with no custom bells and whistles. But, then, what I got to know, no ABAP even. ChatGPT, in fact, is ideal for such sort of questions My prompt was different(after a few refinements).
Can you give me an enterprise architecture idea with SAP BTP leveraging HANA for Real-time Inventory Management System ? I need the complete tech architecture based on data flow including the programming languages needed including for CPI in markdown format.
Whatever the way I asked it, it’s answer was consistent. This is going to be the tech stack.
SAP HANA database: In-memory database that will store and manage the inventory data.
Apache Kafka: Data streaming platform that will be used to stream inventory data from the HANA database to the integration layer.
SAP Cloud Platform: Integration platform that will be used to process and transform inventory data.
SAP Cloud Platform Integration (CPI): Cloud-based integration tool that will be used to integrate data between the SAP Cloud Platform and other systems.
SAP API Management: API management platform that will be used to manage and secure the APIs used to access the inventory data.
SAPUI5: Web-based UI framework that will be used to develop the user interface for the inventory management system.
The data flow in the system will be as follows:
Inventory data will be stored and managed in the SAP HANA database.
Changes to the inventory data will be streamed from the HANA database to Apache Kafka.
The SAP Cloud Platform integration layer will consume the inventory data from Kafka and process it to ensure it is in the correct format for integration with other systems.
The processed inventory data will be integrated with other systems using SAP Cloud Platform Integration (CPI).
The APIs used to access the inventory data will be managed and secured using SAP API Management.
The user interface for the inventory management system will be developed using SAPUI5.
So, what we are having here is a database into which data is loaded and and you are reading that data - and nothing more!!
And what are the technologies to be used?
Java, Groovy and Javascript. The only rare reference to ABAP here is SQLScript, which again is indrect and not direct.
But then, how do you load the data into the database? There are some standard methods -
SAP Data Services: SAP Data Services is a data integration and transformation tool that can be used to extract data from various sources, transform it, and load it into the SAP HANA database. It supports a wide range of data sources, including databases, flat files, and cloud applications.
SAP HANA Smart Data Integration: SAP HANA Smart Data Integration is a tool that enables real-time data integration from various sources into the SAP HANA database. It supports both structured and unstructured data sources and offers pre-built adapters for common data sources like databases and applications.
SAP HANA Direct Extractor Connection (DXC): SAP HANA DXC is a tool that allows you to extract data from SAP ERP and SAP CRM systems directly into the SAP HANA database. It uses ABAP programming language to extract the data.
SAP HANA SQL Data Warehousing: SAP HANA SQL Data Warehousing is a tool that can be used to load large amounts of data into the SAP HANA database using SQL commands.
SAP HANA Cloud Integration (HCI): SAP HANA Cloud Integration is a cloud-based integration tool that can be used to extract and load data from various sources into the SAP HANA database.
And the programming languages?
A rare reference to ABAP, finally. Just see how avoidable ABAP has become in SAP landscape suddenly!!
In essence, what this means is, if the CPI output mapping contains all your required fields and if it fits the standard, you are looking at core SAP as a black box and all you are doing is manipulating the data through UI5 or some other views.