Item: Eclipse
Rating: 8
Author: Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Eclipse

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I've used Eclipse since my student days as it is a very versatile development environment. Currently, we use Eclipse as the preferred way to write ABAP code for the SAP environment, and to manage our HANA landscape. Eclipse is mainly used by our developers and IT staff, and we have used it with our clients as well.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Eclipse, through its library of tools, is exceptionally broad and can be customized to suit just about any situation.
Eclipse SAP HANA tools are the best way to manage a HANA database.
Eclipse SAP ABAP tools are the preferred way to develop CDS views and modern ABAP programs.

Cons

The biggest issue I have with Eclipse is probably its biggest selling point: it's so big that it can be quite cumbersome to get the appropriate tools and configuration set up for your use case.
I'd like to see (maybe) a lightweight distribution of Eclipse that comes with specific tools for specific purposes (SAP specifically).

Return on Investment

Eclipse being free (and the tools as well) means that this is only a positive return for us.
Without Eclipse you simply cannot develop modern ABAP programs, SAP does not have an IDE that handles these tasks (other than the early beta Cloud IDE).

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code can also be used for CDS development. It is quite lightweight and useful when developing for web environments. Eclipse however, has an ABAP environment as well as the HANA tools. This makes Eclipse (in my opinion) a better solution for a more well-rounded SAP developer given these extra features.

Support Rating

Eclipse has been around for quite some time and is more than just an SAP development tool. In fact, it is probably used more by JAVA and other developers than SAP developers. There are updates and new versions coming out all the time, and support for the product is very strong.

Key Insights

Do you think Eclipse delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Eclipse's feature set?

Yes

Did Eclipse live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Eclipse go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Eclipse again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Slack, Microsoft Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio IDE

Likelihood to Recommend

Eclipse has a better ABAP editor than the built-in editor with SAP. Code completion, error checking, syntax checking, its all handled better in Eclipse. It is also one of the only ways to develop CDS views which drive an awful lot of SAP HANA functionality such as machine learning, and some of their newest programming models.

Comments

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Eclipse is the IDE for SAP developers