Features Overview

Following is an index of the features currently covered by CAP, with status and availability information. In addition, we also list features, which are planned or already in development, but not yet generally available, to give you an idea about our roadmap.

[Legend]

Tag	Explanation
✔	generally and publicly available today
n/a	not applicable for this combination
in prog.	in progress; likely to become available near-term
planned	we might pick that up for development soon
contrib?	not scheduled for development by us so far

CLI & Tools Support

CLI commands
Jump-start cds-based projects	`cds init <project>`	✔
Add a feature to an existing project	`cds add <feature>`	✔
Add models from external sources	`cds import <api>`	✔
Compile cds models to different outputs	`cds compile <models>`	✔
Run your services in local server	`cds serve <services>`	✔
Run and restart on file changes	`cds watch`	✔
Read-eval-event loop	`cds repl`	✔
Inspect effective configuration	`cds env`	✔
Prepare for deployment	`cds build`	✔
Deploy to databases or cloud	`cds deploy`	✔
Create an extension project	`cds extend <app-url>`	✔
Activate an extension project	`cds activate`	✔
Login to extendable SaaS application	`cds login <app-url>`	✔
Logout from extendable SaaS application	`cds logout`	✔

Run cds help <command> to find details about an individual command. Use cds version to check the version that you’ve installed. To know what is the latest version, see the Release Notes for CAP.

Editors/IDE Support	Application Studio	VSCode	Eclipse
CDS Syntax Highlighting	✔	✔	✔
CDS Code Completion	✔	✔	✔
CDS Prettyfier	✔	✔	✔
Advanced Debug/Run Tools	✔
Project Explorer	✔
…

CDS Language & Compiler

	CDS
Entity-Relationship Modeling	✔
Custom-defined Types	✔
Views / Projections	✔
Associations & Compositions	✔
Annotations → Common, OData	✔
Aspects	✔
Services…	✔
— w/ Redirected Associations	✔
— w/ Auto-exposed Targets	✔
— w/ Actions & Functions	✔
— w/ Events	in prog.
Managed Compositions	✔
Structured Elements	planned
Nested Projections	planned
Calculated Fields	planned
Managed n:m Associations	planned
Linters as pluggable architecture	contrib?

Providing Services

Core Framework Features	CDS	Node.js	Java
Automatically Serving CRUD Requests	n/a	✔	✔
Deep-Read/Write Structured Documents	✔	✔	✔
Automatic Input Validation	✔	✔	✔
Auto-filled Primary Keys	✔	✔	✔
Implicit Paging	✔	✔	✔
Implicit Sorting	✔	✔	✔
Access Control	✔	✔	✔
Arrayed Elements	✔	✔	in prog.
Streaming & Media Types	✔	✔	in prog.
Conflict Detection through ETags	✔	✔	✔
Authentication via JWT	n/a	✔	✔
Basic Authentication	n/a	✔	✔

Enterprise Features	CDS	Node.js	Java
Authorization	✔	✔	✔
Analytics in Fiori	✔	in prog.	in prog.
Localization/i18n	✔	✔	✔
Managed Data	✔	✔	✔
Localized Data	✔	✔	✔
Temporal Data	✔	✔	✔
Dynamic Extensibility	✔	✔	✔
Monitoring / Logging	n/a	in prog.	in prog.
Audit Logging	n/a	in prog.	in prog.

Inbound Protocol Support	CDS ¹	Node.js	Java
REST / OpenAPI	in prog.	✔	✔
OData V2	✔	✔²	✔
OData V4	✔	✔	✔
OData V4 for APIs	in prog.	in prog.	in prog.
GraphQL³	contrib?	contrib?	contrib? ⁴

¹ Export CDS models to …
² Through V2 proxy; only to support customers with existing V2 UIs
³ Could be a good case for 3rd-party contribution
⁴ For Java try out the provided sample code.

Consuming Services

Service Consumption APIs	Node.js	Java
Uniform Consumption APIs → Hexagonal Architecture	✔	✔
Dynamic Querying	✔	✔
Programmatic Delegation	✔	✔
Generic Delegation	planned	planned
Resilience (retry, circuit breaking, …)	in prog.	✔

Using SAP Cloud SDK behind the scenes

Outbound Protocol Support	CDS ¹	Node.js	Java
REST / OpenAPI	planned	✔	✔
OData V2	✔	✔	in prog.
OData V4	✔	✔	in prog.
GraphQL²	contrib?	contrib?	contrib? ³

¹ Import API to CSN
² Could be a good case for 3rd-party contribution
³ For Java try out the provided sample code.

Events / Messaging

	CDS	Node.js	Java
Declared Events in CDS	✔	in prog.	in prog.
Mock Broker to speed up local dev	n/a	in prog.	in prog.
SAP Enterprise Messaging] (Singletenancy)	n/a	in prog.	✔
SAP Enterprise Messaging (Multitenancy)	n/a	in prog.	in prog.
Event Logs (Kafka)	n/a	planned	planned
Import AsyncAPI	planned
Export AsyncAPI	planned

Database Support

	CDS/deploy	Node.js	Java
SAP HANA out of the box	✔	✔	✔
SAP HANA Cloud	✔	✔	✔
SQLite out of the box ¹	✔	✔	✔
MongoDB out of the box	n/a	planned	in prog.
Pluggable drivers architecture	in prog.	in prog.	in prog.
Out-of-the-box support for other DBs?	contrib?	contrib? ²	contrib?

¹ To speed up development. Not for productive use!
² For Node.js, see the community project cds-pg - PostgreSQL adapter for SAP CDS.

You can already integrate your database of choice in a project or a contribution level. The last two are meant to further facilitate this by out-of-the-box features in CAP.

UIs/Frontend Support

	CDS	Node.js	Java
Serving Fiori UIs	✔	✔	✔
Fiori Annotations in CDS	✔	✔	✔
Advanced Value Help	✔	✔	✔
Draft Support	✔	✔	✔
Draft for Localized Data	✔	✔	✔
Support for Fiori Analytics	✔	in prog.	in prog.
Support for other UI technologies, e.g. Vue.js ¹	✔	✔	✔

¹ through standard REST/AJAX

Platform Support & Integration

	Node.js	Java
Deploy to/run on Cloud Foundry	✔	✔
Deploy to/run on Kubernetes¹	contrib?	contrib?
Deploy to/run on Kyma²	contrib?	contrib?
SaaS on-/off-boarding	✔	✔
Multitenancy	✔	✔
Health checks	planned	✔

¹ Available on plain Kubernetes level → see blog post by Thomas Jung
² Available on Kyma level → see blog post by Uwe Klinger