It took some time for me to start liking ABAP, as the development tools (at least at that time) were really a pain in the a**. It did (and does) have some very cool features like forward navigation, which basically lets you double click on any variable, method, function or other dev object to navigate to the respective underlying code. But especially the source code editor was relict from 20 years ago: No code completion, no code folding, even no syntax highlighting.

In the last four years, this has already improved a lot. Beside code completion, folding and syntax highlighting, even the debugger was greatly enhanced. Nevertheless the ABAP Development Workbench (more often referred to as se80 – its transaction code), somehow still feels not like Visual Studio, Netbeans or Eclipse, as it is still lacking a certain degree of flexibility.

As SAP has provided a large amount of addons/plugins for Eclipse in the last years for e.g. developing business applications in Java, I was always wondering why the ABAP IDE was not ported to Eclipse as well. Seems that some (many?) other people thought the same; at this year’s SAP TechEd in Munich, the new ABAP Eclipse IDE was announced during Demo Jam. It is still just a project without a publish date, but looks like SAP is finally going to provide a competitive IDE for ABAP developers!

Have a look at the demo jam recording to see a presentation about it. (You can jump to the very end, if you are not interested into the other great demos.) Furthermore, you can find a screencast here (without audio), which is just showing off the look and feel.

Beside that, we can now get dinner at our office for 6 RMB (60 euro cents) starting at 6.30h. It is very basic (noodles, some rice, dumplings and so on), but tastes good and kills hunger. For those, who have to work longer, it is even for free after 7.30h. A really great service…

Enterprise SOA is a blueprint for an adaptable, flexible, and open IT architecture for developing services-based, enterprise-scale business solutions. With SAP NetWeaver as a technical foundation, enterprise SOA moves IT architectures to higher levels of adaptability — and moves companies closer to the vision of real-time enterprises by elevating Web services to an enterprise level.

E-SOA gains more and more attention in the IT-business as it is an innovative way of doing business. However, at the same time it comes with certain barriers and difficulties which need to be overcome. This movie shows how Perfect for People B.V. tackles E-SOA…

Lunch in the plane was great. The concert of 148 Asian people (beside me, there was only one other western guy) slurping their drinks and meals was really relaxing. Afterwards, I was so fortunate to be able to listen to 1.5 hours of noisy and excited discussion of the couple, which was sitting next to me. This was accompanied by even louder snoring of an Indian guy on the other side of the corridor. After 2.5(!) hours we finally arrived in Chengdu. The landing felt like this:

Very interesting is, that all people were directly switching on their mobiles as soon as the airplane touched the ground with at least one tire, although the personnel explicitly said, that one should wait until the plane fully stopped. And did I mention, that Chinese people seem to like the start sound of their mobiles? That was the second concert of the day…

So, now it is my third day here and I like it so far. Unfortunately I did not see very much from the city itself. The company’s office is located in a software park a little bit outside. The building and its environment is very nice. Really interesting is, that the government seems to be pushing the development of the infrastructure. The streets in this area are even bigger than in Shanghai most of the time, but next to the streets much space is still free or construction work just started.

The last evenings we always went out to have dinner together with some colleagues. On Monday, we went to a mushroom hot pot restaurant. Those, who know me better, know that mushroom is not the food, which I prefer most, but cooked in the hot pot it tasted really good. Yesterday we had dim sum, which was very delicious. Afterwards we went shopping at Carrefour and then the others went for a massage. I was too tired and as well wanted to watch the recording of WWDC.
By the way…Oliver told me this morning that the massage was a little bit rough.

These are some impressions from Chengdu (not very representative ):

2007-06-11..15 – Business Trip to Chengdu

2007-05-10 – Shopping@Metro

We even tested some bicycles. I will get the video from Christoph within the next days…so stay tuned.

Friday night, Christoph, Yi (a German-Chinese friend of Christoph), Alexander (another fellow student of Christoph) and I went to a Korean restaurant and had Korean BBQ. Afterwards we went to a club called BabyFace and had a lot of fun. Fortunately taking pictures was not allowed.

Yesterday morning Michael finally arrived. We will both work at the same department here in Shanghai. In the evening we went with ten people to a hotpot restaurant. Hotpot means, that you have a pot with hot broth in the middle of the table. Everyone throws different kinds of vegetables and meat in it. After some minutes it is cooked and you can (try to) get it out of the hot pot using your chop sticks.

2007-05-12 – Hotpot Dinner + Window’s

Coming Thursday, the German chamber in Shanghai hosts an event, at which the former chancellor of Germany, Gerhard Schroeder, will take a speech. The event is taking place in the Jin Mao tower in Pudong. Although it is not mandatory to wear a suite, I think it is better to be over-dressed than under-dressed. Therefore, Michael, Patrick and I went to the fabric market today to buy hand-tailored suites. The suites and shirts will be finished on Wednesday. So, let’s see whether the quality of the clothes is as good as the many Chinese shop owners promised.

And we went to KFC today. Look how much Michael liked his…erhh…chicken drumsticks…:-)

2007-05-13 – KFC and Fabric Market