Eclipse Photon - Missing SAP Cloud Platform Tools

[christophroth]

Hi there,

i've updated my eclipse from Neon to Photon this day, and wanted to install the SAP Cloud Platform Tools for developing Java and SAP HANA on the NEO-Environment. But when i try to install the plugins from "https://tools.hana.ondemand.com/photon" there some of the required tools missing.

So currently i'm missing the following plugins under SAP Cloud Platform Tools

• Documentation for SAP Cloud Platform
• SAP Cloud Platform Tools for Java
• SAP JVM Tools

Does anybody know why this tools are not available in eclipse Photon?
When i switch back to eclipse oxygen the tools are available but not in photon.

Oxygen:

Photon:

[christophroth]

Hi Ivan,

i'm afraid to hear this, because as far as i know eclipse oxygen is no longer supported.

The current eclipse version is 2018-09 and the next eclipse version is 2018-12 and is released tomorrow.

Do you know until when we can expect an update for the "SAP Cloud Platforms Tools" for a current version of eclipse?

I've also missing the Tool "SAP Cloud Platform Tools for Connecting to SAP HANA Systems" unter the "SAP HANA Tools". I've seen that this tools are also not available in oxygen. They are only avaialable in neon.

So is it the recommend way to develop on eclipse Neon, which is a 2,5 year old unsupported eclipse version, to develop Apps in the SAP Cloud Platform Neo Environment?

@Nabheet Thank you for the tip. I've tried to install all the plugins in the current version of eclipse (2018-09). After some workarrounds i've got eclipse running with all the plugins, but it can not be the recommended way to install neon and oxygen plugins in a eclipse version which is 2-3 versions above the version of the plugins.

Best regards,
Christoph

[Ivan-Mirisola]

Hi Christoph,

Sorry for the long answer, but I really feel that some stuff needs clarifying from my side.

AFAIK (and I don't belong to product team) SAP has no commitment to follow the Eclipse release strategy. Eclipse foundation has opted on releasing a new version every 12 months. Each new release doesn't provide plug-in compatibility with the previous releases - so plug-in life-time is just 12 months before it needs to be reviewed. Meaning: on every release SAP has to perform adaptation on its own plugins to be compatible with the newest release and this goes into a new release cycle - which requires through testing on SAP's behalf. So, it is virtually impossible to keep up with the release of newer Eclipse versions.

Let's take Oxygen for instance: it's last update was version 3a released on April 2018. Therefore, this release has a life time of just 8 months as of today. As you can see it is not fair to suppose that both companies should join efforts in performing simultaneous releases - this would probably impose a heavy burden on Eclipse's software release cycle and they would probably end up having to delay it until every other company (not just SAP) has made their plugins compatible and tested.

Therefore, it is "expected" that corporate-grade plugins will not always be supported on the newest and greatest third-party software tools - it is simply a matter of investment protection versus time.

With that said I find it hard to believe that Oxygen has reached its end-of-life. Eclipse doesn't use that concept and one will always be be able to download and install versions as old as 10 years - which is simply untrue for companies that indeed implement the end-of-life for their products. It just means that Eclipse has thoroughly tested its software and has given the community three opportunities to express any of its bugs to be fixed before it can move on to the next major release. Does this mean it is "bug-free"? Of course not! During this time you can say Eclipse is performing support to its "customers". However, it doesn't mean older releases have become completely obsolete and useless - therefore no need to be dumped on behalf of newer releases.

Nonetheless, let's agree that if you keep an eye on the SAP tools download page you'll be able to see that SAP has put a great deal of effort on supporting newer Eclipse versions. I remember having installed Neon on my machine a couple of years ago and more recently (June) I installed Oxygen. Since then I've been using it for all development tasks I need related to Java, HANA or even SCP. And I have never faced any issues with it so far that prevented me on doing my tasks. Besides that, SAP releases bug fixes frequently. So I will probably replace Oxygen with Photon only after SAP has released all plugins for it. It is hard for me to say when this will happen since there is no publicly available release dates for SAP plugins.

If you ask me which Eclipse version you should use for your SAP software development needs, my answer is: use Oxygen until the plugin you need isn't available on Photon. Keep an eye on the download page and start using Photon once the plugin needed is available. I would also recommend using SAP web development tools such as Web IDE (BTW: this IDE is based on Eclipse's Tche and Orion.) - there shouldn't be any development tasks you can't achieve with them. Or you could use a combination of both - i.e.: Java on Eclipse and everything else on Web IDE using git for sharing projects between the two.

Regarding the statement: "I've also missing the Tool "SAP Cloud Platform Tools for Connecting to SAP HANA Systems" unter the "SAP HANA Tools"." I believe the plugin name has probably been migrated into another more generic plugin name - I am not sure. But, if all you need is to connect to a HANA Cloud instance on Oxygen, that is still possible and I do it all the time with it.

Regarding installing SAP plugins on top of newer version I must say this is completely unsupported and can have unexpected results. With that said, it is obvious that if you should face issues with such setup, SAP would not be able to help at all.

Best regards,
Ivan

[christophroth]

Hi Ivan,

thanks for your detailed answer.
it looks like my expectations for current versions of the plugins have been too high. So I've followed your recommended way and i've downgraded my eclipse from 2018-09 to oxygen.

Regarding my statement: "I've also missing the Tool "SAP Cloud Platform Tools for Connecting to SAP HANA Systems" unter the "SAP HANA Tools". It does not look like the plugin has been renamed. I've installed all available SAP Plugins from oxygen and the functionaltiy of this plugin was still missing. So i've decided to install the plugin from the Neon-Repository. Currently this is working fine for me.

But i will keep an eye on the tools page and hope that in the near future updates for the plugins will be released 🙂

Best regards,
Christoph

[Ivan-Mirisola]

Hi Christoph Rothmeier,

I've checked and the plugin for connecting to HANA Systems has been deprecated by SAP. You must use either the open-tunnel command from the Neo SDK or install Cloud Connector to open a tunnel to your remote DB. In such cases, you would connect to your HANA system via a local address and port.

Best regards,
Ivan