Where is my place in HANA as an experienced ABAP developer?

[Former Member]

Most of the Abap developers and BI consultants are trying to find the answer of this question even Basis collegues are whispering the same : where is my place in HANA?

Today I will try to guide you to find the answer for ABAP developers, since I am leading a program to transform tens of experienced ABAP developers

Before trying to address the answer let's have a look what is HANA?

Offical SAP HANA page says here: About HANA | SAP HANA

"What is SAP HANA?

SAP HANA combines database, data processing, and application platform capabilities in-memory. The platform provides libraries for predictive, planning, text processing, spatial, and business analytics.

This new architecture enables converged OLTP and OLAP data processing within a single in-memory column-based data store with ACID compliance, while eliminating data redundancy and latency. By providing advanced capabilities, such as predictive text analytics, spatial processing, data virtualization, on the same architecture, it further simplifies application development and processing across big data sources and structures. This makes SAP HANA the most suitable platform for building and deploying next-generation, realtime applications and analytics."

If you are an ABAP developer, there is very much space for you in order to transform and built your career in HANA. However you need to transform very much, in order to be as effective as today. SAP HANA has application platform services which simplifies the development of real-time applications with scalable web server, business rules and user interface library. Good news abap is available on HANA at the moment, this might be used as leverage in order to get used to HANA. But you need to improve your expertise about following topics:

• Technical concepts of SAP HANA
• Introduction to ADT (ABAP Development Tools, also known as ABAP in Eclipse)
• Analysis Tools (Runtime Analysis, SQL Trace , Code Inspector)
• Optimization of classical ABAP in SAP HANA Context
• Open SQL Performance Rules for SAP HANA
• Accessing SAP HANA using native SQL and ADBC (ABAP Data Base Connectivity)
• Consuming SAP HANA views in ABAP
• Consuming SAP HANA stored procedures
• Debugging SAP HANA stored procedures
• Using SAP HANA Fuzzy Search in ABAP
• ALV (ABAP List Viewer) for SAP HANA
• Creating HANA views

Those are available here in this offical training programme :HA400 - ABAP Programming for SAP HANA | SAP Training and Certification Shop

SAP HANA Studio will be the new enviroment for you, I know it is totaly different if we compare it to the existing ABAP workbench, but once you get used to you will fall in love for sure. This is pure eclipse and full of functionality in order to manage all the components of the new framework.

Another important topic is SQL , ABAP workbench helped us with its unique functionality in order to develop amazing applications, however in new era you need to be very good at SQL usage.  Very good resource here for further information The Road to HANA for Software Developers

Finally there is some time for transformation but not much remaining, all other platform developers are now ready to compete, we need to act fast !

@sarhanpolatates