Technical education Business software giant SAP is set to introduce a host of developer features on its platform, promising AI agents, knowledge graph and cloud-based integration features in SAP Build’s low-code development environment.

However, commentators point out that it is too early to tell whether AI agents will prove effective for businesses and that the developer environment still relies on desktop tools.

Europe’s largest software company used its annual TechEd developers conference to announce new features for its LLM agent, Joule, which it said “speaks the language of business”. New use cases include dispute management, where autonomous AI agents are configured to analyze and resolve disputes over incorrect or missing invoices, for example.

Holger Mueller, principal analyst at Constellation Research, said Joule is ambitious because it is designed to be a universal assistant for all of SAP. But it was too early to say whether it would be effective.

SAP is also promising enhanced data analysis capabilities with its SAP Knowledge Graph solution, which will be accessible through its SAP Datasphere and Joule environment in the first quarter of 2025.

The vendor promises that it will seamlessly map relationships and context across SAP’s vast data landscape, “enabling organizations to make better decisions with their data” using “SAP-specific business semantics” to reduce costs. inaccurate or irrelevant results. Don’t confuse it with graph databases, which are also used to model semantic relationships. SAP Knowledge Graph is built on its SAP HANA Cloud platform, built on a relational database.

TechEd’s latest round of announcements is aimed at developers. SAP has promised a code explanation and documentation search in SAP Build, which is part of the SAP cloud-based Business Technology Platform. The company claims that the low-code tool will reduce development time for Java and JavaScript developers. Developers can use the wizard features to create extensions directly in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition. SAP Build also promises a way to create cross-functional “merge teams,” including development using the vendor’s own ABAP language to gain “seamless access to ABAP Cloud development tools from SAP Build.”

During the TechEd keynote, Cecilia Huergo, SAP BTP product manager, said developers can create and manage their ABAP Cloud projects from the SAP Build lobby. When they needed to write code, SAP Build “automatically launches the ABAP and Eclipse development tools, where you can see the package” they created.

However, Tobias Hofmann, an expert consultant working for German company DB Systel, emphasized that Eclipse is the same desktop tool that ABAP developers already use.

Talk to The registerhe said: “Eclipse is not integrated into this whole technology aspect. It’s still a desktop application, and sometimes that means users need to log in to Citrix to be able to develop things. It’s not that simple. But maybe that’s the problem. hope: This new term merge teams means that SAP understands that it is no longer the task of one person to do all this kind of development, but a team effort. But that then raises the question of where the tools are to keep everyone active. the same page?”

He said that despite the features promised in SAP Build, development teams would still struggle to coordinate front-end developers, back-end developers, functional consultants and test data. SAP needs to show that these people are able to coordinate to deliver the final application, he said.

Jelena Perfiljeva, development expert at SAP specialist Mindset Consulting, said the idea of ​​”merge teams” was not new, as IT professionals have always worked across functions. “SAP hasn’t revolutionized anything. But even marketing gimmicks aside, I think all of that is pretty much nothing to the vast majority of SAP developers right now. Everything SAP is doing these days “This is simply pushing customers towards cloud subscriptions and ultimately Public Cloud,” she commented.

“ABAP development will always take place in Eclipse. SAP bet on the wrong horse years ago and now it’s too late to untangle the mess: they should have used Visual Studio Code for everything and been done with it. That would have was real,” Perfiljeva said.

Constellation Research’s Mueller said developers liked their SAP desktop IDE, which they tended to avoid modifying at all costs. “The verdict on cloud FDI is not yet in. It will change when AI can show significantly higher productivity,” he said.

SAP was offered the opportunity to respond to these points and declined a request to provide an expert interview. ®