Create an SAP Cloud Application Programming Model Project for SAP HANA Cloud

Dev spaces are like isolated virtual machines in the cloud that can be quickly spun-up. Each dev space type contains tailored tools and pre-installed run-times for a target scenario such as SAP Fiori or mobile development. This simplifies and saves time in setting up the development environment as there’s no need to install anything or upgrade; letting developers focus on their business domain, anytime, anywhere.

In this step we will create a new Dev Space configured for SAP Cloud Application Programming Model (CAP) development. If you already have a dev space configured for CAP and HANA development, you can skip this step as each dev space can hold multiple projects.

1. Go to your SAP Business Technology Platform subaccount and click the Services -> Instances and Subscriptions option.

   

2. Locate the SAP Business Application Studio entry and click Go to Application

   

3. Choose Create Dev Space. Please NOTE: In the SAP BTP trial and free tier you are limited to only two Dev Spaces and only one can be active at a time. If you have performed other tutorials, you might already have reached your maximum. In that case you might have to delete one of the other dev spaces in order to continue with this tutorial.

   

4. Enter any name you wish for your dev space name and choose Full Stack Cloud Application as the kind of application you are creating.

   

5. The Dev space will automatically be configured with the most common tools you need for the type of application you choose. However you can also choose additional, optional extensions. Since you want to combine CAP and HANA artifacts in the same project, we would ask that you also choose SAP HANA Calculation View Editor and SAP HANA Tools at minimum.

   

6. Once all selections are completed, press Create Dev Space

   

7. The Dev Space will then begin starting and the process will take a minute or so as your cloud environment is being created

   

8. Once the Dev Space reaches the green status of RUNNING, you can click on the name of the Dev Space and it will load into the editor within your browser

   

9. You’ll be redirected to your newly created SAP Business Application Studio Dev Space. We recommend you bookmark this URL so it’s easier for you to access this dev space of your SAP Business Application Studio in the future

   

Before we create our SAP HANA project, we want to do a few more one-time configuration steps to prepare the Dev Space

1. In the left side of the Business Application Studio click on the Cloud Foundry targets icon

   

2. Now in the Cloud Foundry Targets window you can expand either Service or Applications and then click on the Logon icon to continue the configuration process

   

3. The Cloud Foundry Sign In and Targets window will then open in a side panel of the SAP Business Application Studio. The first input will prompt you for the API endpoint and your credentials

   

4. The default value proposed is not necessarily the correct value, please confirm. The value can be found in the SAP BTP cockpit at the Subaccount level

   

5. Once you have verified the API endpoint, input the email address you used to create your SAP BTP account and password and press Sign In.

   

6. If successful, the next input will ask you for your Organization. In most situations you will have a single choice. But like the API endpoint earlier, if you need to confirm the correct value it will be displayed in the top navigation of the SAP BTP cockpit

   

7. The final input will ask you for your Space. Press Apply.
   

   

8. Upon completion of all the inputs, you should see that the Organization and Space have been set and you will see any service instances or application instances from the target space. It’s normally to see many less options in this tree display than the screenshot.

   

1. Return to the Explorer view. From the SAP Business Application Studio Welcome tab, click Start from template Create a new project.

   

2. Choose CAP Project and click Start

   

3. Use the following name for your project and click Next

   Name

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   MyHANAApp
   

   This name will be used in different steps. It is recommended that you do not change it unless you remember to replace it in future tasks.

   

   Choose Node.js as the runtime. Select CI/CD Pipeline Integration, Configuration for SAP HANA Deployment, and MTA based SAP Business Technology Platform Deployment as the additional features for your project. Press Finish

   

4. The new project should be added to your workspace automatically.

1. The wizard has generated a Multi-target Application with two modules: a database module and a service module. Expand them to familiarize yourself with the basic folder structure.

   

2. The wizard has also populated the mta.yaml configuration file with the necessary dependencies and parameters for each module. Open it in the code editor by right mouse clicking on it and using the Open With menu option to explore it.

   

   This file is the deployment descriptor and it is the glue that keeps all the micro-services together as a single application throughout its lifecycle. It declares the modules (applications or micro-services) and their dependencies with other micro-services or backing services. You can also use this file to inject variables into the environment variable VCAP_SERVICES of your application.

   This file is very sensitive to indentation and does not allow for tabs.

3. NOTE: if your mta.yaml doesn’t look like the screenshot in the previous step (it is missing the HANA DB module and resources), this could be a current bug in the wizard. If so you can correct the project easily. Open a terminal with the option Terminal -> New Terminal. From the terminal issue the command cds add hana. This should correct your mta.yaml.

   

The Cloud Application Programming Model wizard generates a project that supports HANA development but is not fully configured to target HANA during the development phase. In this step we will adjust the generated project to fully compatible to also contain HANA native artifacts as well.

1. From the mta.yaml file we were just looking at the in the previous step, edit the path of the database module, adjusting the path from gen/db to just db

   

2. In the root of the project there is another important configuration file - the package.json. We are going to need to make several changes to this file as well.

   

   No need to worry about the yellow underlining below the name of the package. This is just a hint and doesn’t have any impact on the tutorial.

3. You can completely delete the devDependencies section of the package.json

4. The rest of the changes will be in the cds section of the file. Replace this entire section of package.json with the following content

   json

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   "cds": {
       "build": {
           "tasks": [
               {
                   "for": "hana",
                   "dest": "../db"
               },
               {
                   "for": "node-cf"
               }
           ]
       },
       "requires": {
           "db": {
               "kind": "hana-cloud"
           }
       }
   }
   

   These changes will alter the generated folder structure of the cds build operation. Content will no longer be placed into the gen folder for the db module but back into the source folders. This also will tell CAP to generate hdbtable artifacts instead of hdbcds. This is a critical change for SAP HANA Cloud compatibility. Finally the db.kind change to HANA tells CAP to use HANA Cloud at development time instead of SQLite.

We are using several dependent Node.js modules in our project. They are referenced in the dependencies section of the package.json file we were just editing. These dependencies need to be installed into your project before we can do any testing.

1. Open a new terminal

   

2. The terminal will open in the bottom right of the Business Application studio

   

3. From the terminal run the command npm install

   shell

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   npm install
   

   

4. For one last change we need to adjust the content generated by the wizard for the db folder. The CAP wizard expects that you will use the cds deploy command to send content into HANA. However to use the HANA Projects view to deploy to HANA we need some additional files in the db folder. Mainly we need a package.json file that will run the @sap-hdi-deploy module. Rather than create this file manually, we will use an open source sample utility called hana-cli. From this same terminal window run the command npm install -g hana-cli

   shell

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   npm install -g hana-cli
   

5. After installation run the command hana-cli createModule

   shell

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   hana-cli createModule
   

You will use the local Git repository for basic version management.

1. Click on the Source Control icon

   

2. Click on the Initialize Repository icon

   

3. The Source Control panel now shows that it is being managed by Git and changes are being tracked

   

Each time you commit to the local or remote repository, you create a version. This will allow you to revert and compare any changes.
It is recommended that you perform commits at the end of each tutorial.

1. Choose Changes -> Stage All Changes to include all the new or changed files in this commits

   

2. Add a commit message and click Commit All (Signed Off):

   

For a real project it is recommended to set a remote repository, for example GitHub. This will allow you to have a copy of your code outside the SAP Business Application Studio Dev Space.