Your company is planning to develop a set of cloud-based applications. For developing the application, you will be using SAP Business Application Studio as your development environment.
SAP Business Application Studio is a cloud-based development environment that introduces some new concepts into the game while redefining long standing ones from other cloud development environments. This lesson aims to elaborate about the Development Space (dev space) concept.
Dev spaces are the essence of SAP Business Application Studio. They are fully-fledged development environments equipped with the runtimes and tools required for specific development scenarios. Each dev space is optimized for a specific development scenario. This means that it is delivered with a predefined set of tools we believe are required for this scenario.
A dev space can easily be created in the dev space manager. When your dev space is created, you have your environment up-and-running and you can start your development. There is no need to install additional tools or do some complex configurations, all you need is already preinstalled and preconfigured.
SAP Business Application Studio supports several SAP development scenarios, such as Cloud Applications, SAP Fiori UI development, and SAP HANA native.
The different tools and runtimes are available as extensions. Each extension can hold one or more tool and/or runtime. The content of each extension is mentioned in the extension description.
When creating a new dev space, you are asked to select from various development scenarios (for example, dev space types). For each scenario, there is predefined list of extensions which are installed by default. On top of the predefined extensions that you can see on the left, you can optionally add more extensions from the Additional Extensions list on the right. While you can add an unlimited number of extensions to your dev space, you should keep in mind that the more you add, the longer it will take for your dev space to load. Therefore, only add the extensions that you really need.
Once you have chosen Create Dev Space, the SAP Business Application Studio will spin up a (kind of) private virtual machine for you, and install all the selected extensions into it. In a nutshell, under the hood, Kubernetes technology is used to provision and manage containers to create an isolated dev space. Once the dev space status turns to RUNNING, you can start your development.
Whenever you create a new dev space, the latest version of the selected extensions is installed. Extensions in existing dev spaces are updated automatically every time it is restarted, therefore making sure you always use the most up-to-date version of the tools.
Dev spaces are completely isolated from one another, there is no way to access the file system and processes of one dev space from another dev space, even if both are owned by the same user. This level of isolation, together with the containers approach, enables us to provide the long-requested terminal access, and the ability to run almost any command as if you are working on your own laptop.
Unlike your laptop, dev spaces are also disposable. If, for some reason, your dev space is messed up, you can always create a new one and easily move your projects to it by downloading them from the previous one and uploading them to the new one. Having your projects always in sync with their Git repositories, will make it even easier to switch between dev spaces.
To save on resources, dev spaces are stopped after 3 hours of inactivity (1 hour in Trial and free-tier). Don’t worry, your dev space, including all the files it contained, will be restored once you start the dev space again. However, processes like applications, or jobs you were running during your development, will have to be restarted manually.
Dev spaces will be preserved as long as your subscription to SAP Business Application Studio is in place and of course, if not explicitly deleted.
You can create up to 10 dev spaces and have 2 of them running at the same time. In trial and free-tier accounts, there is a limitation to a total of two dev spaces and only one running at a time.
In this exercise, we will finalize the set up of accounts with the tools and services needed to get you started for developing applications on SAP Business Technology Platform. Take note that we will use a single subaccount for development (design time), as well as for deployment (runtime). In real-world scenarios, design-time and runtime environments are typically managed separately to reduce operational costs.
In this exercise, you will perform the following tasks:
In this exercise, we will be creating a new subaccount. It is also possible to apply the required configuration steps to an existing subaccount. However, to keep things clean and separated from other activities, we recommend creating a separate subaccount for this learning journey.
Details on the prerequisites for setting up an account on SAP Business Application Studio for application development is covered in this lesson.
Depending on whether you are using a Trial Account, Free-Tier, or an Enterprise Account, the options available might differ. If you are using an Enterprise Account you will have access to all options. If you are using a Trial or Free-Tier Account, you will find that some options are not available. In those cases watch the simulation.
As discussed earlier in this lesson, you will be using a booster to set up a new subaccount for developing applications on SAP Business Application Studio. The setup environment however, will only enable you to design and preview your applications. You will have to subscribe to additional entitlements and services to be able to deploy your application.
Note that some of the services that this learning journey links to, can incur costs.
If you are concerned about charges, you can opt to skip the corresponding exercises and watch the simulation instead.
If you are using a Trial Account the booster described in task 1 will not be available as SAP Business Application Studio is available by default. In this case, continue with task 2.
In this exercise, it is recommended to save your work more often than requested in the substeps.
Let's get started.
You can perform this exercise in two ways:
We strongly recommend to perform the steps in the live environment first.
The following simulation reproduces the full exercise execution:
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Name | (of your choice, for example:) RisksManagmentDevSpace |
You will see a notification on the lower right side with the text We have finished installing all tools and templates for you, enjoy your work! )
Note By default SAP Business Application Studio opens with a dark theme. For better readability we use a light theme in this Learning Journey. You can adapt the themes by selecting the Manage button on the lower right side of your screen. Then choose Themes and Color Theme. This will open a list where you can select which theme you would like to use.
