Yesterday I ran an SAP CodeJam in Utrecht, in The Netherlands, on "Service Integration with the SAP Cloud Application Programming Model" (CAP), and I think it's fair to say it was a great success.

More SAP CodeJams in 2023

Moving into 2023, my Developer Advocate teammates and I are looking forward to running more SAP CodeJam events. This was not the first SAP CodeJam event this year, Tom Jung ran one in January on the btp CLI and APIs. But it was the first SAP CodeJam on this specific topic.

If you're reading this it's quite possible you already know how fundamentally important CAP is (if not, may I recommend CAP is important because it's not important). Moreover, the breadth of application for CAP is enormous, and it makes sense to have some more focused subject matter based CAP CodeJams as well as more general ones.

So in addition to an SAP CodeJam covering CAP and SAP HANA Cloud (see this instance for example), we now have this SAP CodeJam which is designed to give you a friendly but deep dive introduction to key aspects of service integration with CAP. What service integration is, how it works, what CAP offers you as a developer, plus best practices and more, using a simple local service combined with a remote SAP S/4HANA Cloud service on the SAP API Business Hub. You can read more in the About this CodeJam section of the material repository.

Yesterday's event

So, how did yesterday's SAP CodeJam on Service Integration with SAP Cloud Application Programming Model go?

My journey there

I've flown enough work air miles in the past few decades to last more than a lifetime, so I take the opportunity to travel by train whenever I can these days. It's not just better for the planet, it's better for my mental wellbeing too, and it's so much easier to work and relax.

So I took a first train from Manchester Piccadilly to London Euston, arriving in time to spend a pleasant hour's walk around my old stomping ground (I studied at University College London and lived and worked in London for years after too).

Then it was time to head to another central London train station, St Pancras, with its well-preserved gothic architecture.

It's here that the Eurostar service has its London terminus, so I headed through passport control and was soon boarded and on my way.

After spending the night in Rotterdam, I set off to Utrecht the next morning, where Wim Snoep kindly picked me up from Utrecht Leidsche Rijn train station.

We had a late breakfast at the INNOV8iON office, and in picking up sandwiches, they had ordered one specifically for me with an elongated bitterbal as they knew that was a favourite of mine. The day was off to a great start! :-)

I'd run an SAP CodeJam at INNOV8iON before, so I knew that all the host duties would be well taken care of by the lovely folks there, and I was right.

Getting started

We were soon underway.

There was a warm welcome for me and all the participants, with a nice introduction from Wim as folks arrived and started to get to know each other.

The exercises and exercise recaps

Over the next 6 or so hours, we worked through the exercises, with the participants using their own laptops, with a development environment that was (for this particular SAP CodeJam) either a Dev Space in SAP Business Application Studio or VS Code with a dev container.

After each exercise we stepped away from the keyboards and got together for a 5 minute recap to work through some open ended questions relating to what we'd just done, and to discuss anything that came up, in that exercise.

Picture courtesy of Wim Snoep

This way we stayed on track together throughout the entire event, and everyone also had a chance to allow what they'd just worked through to bed down more firmly in the brain, before moving on.

A break for dinner

After getting about two thirds of the way through the exercises, we took a well-earned break for some delicious food and drink, provided by our hosts, and took a chance to get to know each other better and talk about what we'd learned so far.

After that, we got back to it, completing the core part of the SAP CodeJam content (exercises 1 through 11), leaving the last bonus exercise for the participants to complete at home. This bonus exercise covers some CAP-based OData annotations for SAP Fiori elements; not directly part of the core topic, but certainly related and useful to have as reference.

HANA Cafe NL podcast

After the main event had finished, I had the opportunity to join Wim and another participant Julian to record an episode of the HANA Cafe NL podcast, with Twan van den Broek. We talked about the day and it was a lot of fun, not to mention fascinating to see Twan's rather professional podcast recording equipment!

Wrapping up

All in all it was a great day, made successful by the hosts at INNOV8iON and especially by all the participants who embraced the SAP CodeJam spirit, getting to know each other while working through the learning material together.

During a couple of the post-exercise recap sessions, we even had bonus information shared with the group by some of the participants. Now that's what I call collaborative learning!