S/4 Hana - and now?

Developers are facing a complete paradigm shift, which means a fundamental reorientation.

"At G.I.B, we believe in the success of the new technology and are now doing everything we can to bring our expertise to the top level in this field as well"

reports application developer Rüsan Ergüzel.

As a result, the company is planning a multi-week training program, a combination of online lectures, self-tests, assignments and discussion forums.

"This training offensive presents us with a real challenge".

Dina Zwiorek, HR Manager, comments.

"because the time invested has to be wrested from day-to-day operations and ongoing program development."

G.I.B is therefore focusing on internal knowledge transfer. The S/4 pioneers are to pass on their newly acquired knowledge to their colleagues through daily teamwork and internal training.

With S/4, a lot changes for developers. For example, Hana applications cannot be programmed in the familiar Abap development environment, but only via Eclipse. This requires knowledge of HTML, Javascript and other programming languages.

The scripting language (SQL Script), the database environment and the interface design (Fiori) are also new.

Major changes also await the user. For example, they will have to say goodbye to the familiar SAP GUI and adapt to a completely new interface design with new operating logic.

But regardless of the potential enthusiasm for the new design, SAP users who want to switch to S/4 Hana face the question of whether the old and reliable add-ons will still work flawlessly when they do.

"That's what we're looking at right now"

reports Ergüzel. However, the developer faces the dilemma that his applications must be compatible with S/4 Hana Logistics, which is not even available on the market yet.

For this reason, G.I.B is currently taking a close look at Simple Finance. Here, functionalities, interface design and, above all, the source code are being scrutinized. They are looking for new language elements and new database statements.

"We use the Code Inspector, SQL Monitor and SQL Performance Optimization tools to track down deviations and check SQL queries for Hana suitability"

he explains, and is relaxed about the changeover; after all, the entire G.I.B Dispo Cockpit family is already Hana-certified.

A first Hana-optimized module is also already available; the Forecast module from the Dispo Cockpit family has been in use since the beginning of 2014. Florian Lenz, head of the "Forecast" department, developed the Hana modification.

The first task was to analyze which computational operation and which logic experience added value through processing in Hana. The focus was on operations with particularly large data volumes as well as analyses and evaluations that receive a quality gain through real-time calculation.

"The important thing here is to use the statements available in the Hana database, which require a new way of looking at each operation logic"

explains Lenz, who has not developed a stand-alone Hana version for his program, but has incorporated switches into the existing program. The program checks at the appropriate points whether a Hana or a conventional database is being accessed.

"While this is more complicated for development, it significantly eases the maintenance burden later on."

In any case, the two department heads and passionate developers are unanimous in their assessment of the new SAP generation.

"Simplicity is definitely the future. We are convinced that in a few years all customers will move to a Hana database, whether as a by-side approach or fully migrated, whether on premise or in the cloud"

Ergüzel says and adds:

"We at G.I.B are well positioned to do this and are looking forward to the new challenge and the exciting possibilities and opportunities that the new technology will bring."