PersonSAPDeveloper Advocate
DJ Adams
Capabilities
Contributes to
Agent guidanceCAPUI5BTPABAPSAP CommerceAgent guidancePackaged knowledge you hand a coding agent so it gets a framework right unprompted — skills, rule files, instruction packs. Distinct from agent tooling, which is about building agentic features into your application, and from [agent access to your code](capability:agent-code-access), where the agent reads the real project instead of being handed a file about it.
Entries
Group by14 of 14 entries
EntrySignals
Contributes to
bookshop-demobookshop-demoSimple CDS bookshop — the reference model most CAP explanations build on.independent, cap
Neither the package manifest nor the repository tree declares a licence.
Simple CDS bookshop model used across CAP explanations
cap-microservices-workshopcap-microservices-workshopA reCAP 2025 hands-on workshop on cutting a CAP application into microservices, and on when to do it at all, built up over six exercises from a solution monorepo to deployment and test.sap official, cap
reCAP 2025 workshop on cutting a CAP app into microservices
cap-nodejs-dev-envcap-nodejs-dev-envA development container definition for CAP Node.js with @sap/cds-dk and the Cloud Foundry CLI, for use with VS Code's Dev Containers extension or GitHub Codespaces.sap official, cap
Development container definition for CAP Node.js
capire/bookstorecapire/bookstoreA composite application assembled from separately deployed services — bookshop, reviews, orders and a common content package — rather than one project with more folders in it.sap official, cap
Composite CAP app from separately deployed services
capire/docscapire/docsThe sources of capire itself, in the repository it is built from: the documentation every core_coverage claim in this graph is checked against, so a claim can be dated against a commit.sap official, cap
Sources of capire, the CAP documentation
SAP Developers MCPSAP Developers MCPThe hosted MCP server of developers.sap.com, over which an agent searches SAP's tutorials, reads missions and queries the site's knowledge graph of tutorials and concepts.sap official, umbrella
Hosted MCP server of developers.sap.com tutorials and missions
SAP-samples/cap-cds-hands-onSAP-samples/cap-cds-hands-onA hands-on, five-part workshop on CAP's Conceptual Definition Language, from a first entity definition through types, aspects, associations and compositions to annotations and declarative constraints.sap official, cap
Five-part workshop on CDS, from a first service to constraints
SAP-samples/cap-hana-exercises-codejamSAP-samples/cap-hana-exercises-codejamAn eight-exercise CodeJam that builds a full-stack CAP application on SAP HANA Cloud, from HDI containers to calculation views and stored procedures.sap official, cap
CodeJam building a full-stack CAP app on SAP HANA Cloud
SAP-samples/cap-local-development-workshopSAP-samples/cap-local-development-workshopA reCAP 2025 workshop touring CAP's local-development toolset in seven exercises: cds watch, SQLite, configuration profiles, mocking, local messaging and monorepos, ending with remote debugging.sap official, cap
reCAP 2025 workshop on CAP's local-development toolset
SAP-samples/cap-service-integration-codejamSAP-samples/cap-service-integration-codejamA CodeJam on integrating and consuming external services from a CAP project over twelve exercises, from importing and mocking an OData service to the SAP Cloud SDK covering connectivity and destinations.sap official, cap
CodeJam on consuming external services from a CAP project
SAP-samples/cap-tour-hands-onSAP-samples/cap-tour-hands-onAn eight-exercise tour of CAP features: mocked auth and messaging, the cds REPL, plugin authoring, status-transition flows, testing, declarative constraints and API client packages.sap official, cap
Eight-exercise tour of CAP features, from mocking to plugins
SAP-samples/fiori-elements-fpm-exercises-codejamSAP-samples/fiori-elements-fpm-exercises-codejamA CodeJam walkthrough that builds a bookshop app on the SAP Fiori elements flexible programming model, chapter by chapter, over a CAP Node.js OData backend.sap official, cap
CodeJam building a bookshop app on the flexible programming model
SAP-samples/odata-dd-serverSAP-samples/odata-dd-serverThe CAP Node.js server behind the OData Deep Dive tutorial series on the SAP Tutorial Navigator, serving the OData service the tutorials work against rather than standing alone as a reference.sap official, cap
CAP Node.js server behind the OData Deep Dive tutorials
xflightsxflightsA reuse package serving master-data entities (Airlines, Airports and Flights) as a service that other CAP applications compose into their own data model.sap official, cap
CAP reuse package serving Airlines, Airports and Flights data
Writing and topics
21 of 21 pieces
Piece, what it offersStill applies
CAP in the age of AI #7 - vector embeddings wrap-upCAP in the age of AI #7 - vector embeddings wrap-upThe same embeddings model taken from SQLite to SAP HANA Cloud, then handed to an agent. Locally it is @cap-js/ai that adds the vector functions SQLite lacks and downloads an all-MiniLM L6v2 ONNX model on first start; on HANA natural language processing has to be switched on, the model name is a mandatory argument, the vectors it returns are 768 dimensions, and dimensions must match on both sides of a comparison. HANA itself can be given SAP AI Core as a remote source for other embedding models, which a CDS.ql expression has to inject because the postfix notation only takes what the CDS model holds, and the hour ends with a search function over cosine similarity exposed over @cap-js/mcp, so an agent asked about low output from solar panels calls semantic search instead of writing the query itself.published 2026-10-16
CAP in the age of AI #6 - vector embeddingsCAP in the age of AI #6 - vector embeddingsVector embeddings put to work in the incident management sample, answering whether this problem has been seen before. An embedding element of type Vector is calculated and stored from the vector_embedding function, so the database refreshes it whenever the text behind it changes, and cosine_similarity compares it with a freshly embedded string; because a title says little, a scheduled action first summarises each incident's conversation through a model on SAP AI Core and the embedding is taken from that summary. The similar-incidents list is a view joining incidents to themselves, with order and limit set in a before handler on the expanded query, and the vector element excluded from the service, since OData knows nothing about vectors — on SAP HANA Cloud the function is native, while SQLite needs packages added to the project.published 2026-10-09
Custom Business Logic Extensibility in CAP (CDS-Oyster)Custom Business Logic Extensibility in CAP (CDS-Oyster)A Devtoberfest 2026 session walking @sap/cds-oyster — at version 0.55, with 1.0 stated for Q4 — end to end on a multitenant xtravels, from the application developer's side and the extension developer's side. The application developer adds a submit-for-review action to the status flow and opens exactly one surface for custom code: a separate extension service marked as extensible code, holding a no-op validate action and two read-only helper entities, which the host application calls before the status change; nothing else is extensible, because the annotation defaults to false. The extension developer works in a project whose base model came from cds pull, with test data, a server.js and types from @cap-js/cds-typer added so the UI and code completion work, debugs the handler locally and pushes it as an @sap/cds-mtxs extension, after which the next request rejects a travel over the policy limit without a restart — the code having been stored as an annotation in the tenant's model and run in a Rust WebAssembly sandbox with no database connection, whose queries go back to the CAP runtime as CQL strings, which is tenant extensibility extended from fields to logic.published 2026-10-09
CAP in the age of AI #5 - agents wrap-upCAP in the age of AI #5 - agents wrap-upThe agents topic closed out on what sits around the agent rather than inside it, now that the documentation has moved into capire. The chat preview's session is persisted in the database rather than kept in memory, traces go out through @cap-js/telemetry to a self-hosted MLflow under the OpenTelemetry conventions for generative AI, and the panel is explicit that @agent reuses the MCP adapter's code programmatically without serving an MCP endpoint. It ends in the xtravels sample, where a travel agent delegates to a hotel-service sub-agent and reaches a separately started flight service over MCP through the service binding CAP resolves anyway. Earlier in the hour the same agent answers from a model running on the presenter's laptop, reached as an OpenAI-compatible endpoint.published 2026-10-02
What's in Daniel Hutzel's brain?What's in Daniel Hutzel's brain?A Devtoberfest 2026 session in the building-apps track, in which Daniel Hutzel and DJ Adams work through what the CAP team is building for agents. A bookshop gets an MCP endpoint beside its OData one from a single annotation, with the plugin writing the coding agent's configuration itself; in the xt-travels sample five services that know nothing about each other are served over MCP and an agent does the orchestration the hand-built UI and its value helps used to do. Hutzel then annotates a service as an agent so the ReAct loop and the choice of model move into the CAP service, and finally drops MCP for a skill that teaches the agent CQL instead, which is where the edges to Serve your application over MCP, Agent tooling and Agent guidance come from. The mechanism under all of it, a plugin file in the package root and event handlers that can be added to any CAP service, is the edge to Plugin authoring.published 2026-10-02
CAP in the age of AI #4 - more on agentsCAP in the age of AI #4 - more on agentsAsking a human first, and telling the agent how to behave. Ordering a book through @cap-js/agents happens without a question being asked; the human-in-the-loop annotation on the action turns the same request into an approve-or-reject step, which the episode follows down to the A2A status update that stores the task in an input-required state in the database — A2A itself being JSON-RPC 2.0 over HTTP with server-sent events for the stream. The rest is instructions on disk: an agents.md in the service's own folder removes the question about how many copies to order, a skill under a skills folder is advertised by its description and read only when the agent decides the case applies, and either file makes the plugin build a deep agent instead of the plain one.published 2026-09-11
CAP in the age of AI #3 - from MCP to A2ACAP in the age of AI #3 - from MCP to A2AThe episode that finishes @cap-js/mcp with authorisation and then crosses to agents. @requires and @restrict are the same annotations CAP already has, and the plugin reads them to filter the tool list and the describe output per user and per request, so a model is not told about entities the caller cannot reach — where the OData metadata of the same service lists every exposed entity regardless. The second half annotates a service with @agent from @cap-js/agents, which serves it over A2A with an agent card and a chat preview, runs first against a mocked response and then against SAP AI Core bound with cds bind and a hybrid profile, and reuses the MCP adapter's tools rather than defining new ones.published 2026-08-21
CAP in the age of AI #2 - more on the MCP adapterCAP in the age of AI #2 - more on the MCP adapterWhat the query tool costs in tokens, and the third tool @cap-js/mcp registers. Counted against a model running locally under llama.cpp, the same query is 26 tokens as CQL and 173 as CQN, and the tool definition sent with every system prompt drops from around 5,500 tokens to around 600 — the reason CQL became the default format. The call tool then exposes a service's unbound actions and functions, as one generic tool or, behind a flag, one tool per action with its own description and input schema; a question from the chat about extension points gets the answer that the adapter does the tools, which the panel calls a small subset of the protocol.published 2026-08-14
Add MCP capabilities to a CAP serviceAdd MCP capabilities to a CAP serviceA fifteen-minute walkthrough of turning a plain CAP service into an MCP server: annotate the service with @mcp, install @cap-js/mcp, and it is served alongside OData at /mcp/<path>. The part worth reading it for is what happens next — cds watch writes the endpoint into the local agent's own configuration file, so OpenCode or Claude Code can call the service without anyone editing JSON by hand. It is built on the tiny-sample facet, so there is nothing to prepare, and it shows the protocol traffic rather than only the result. Written while the adapter was in beta, and it says so.published 2026-08-13
CAP in the age of AI #1 - the MCP adapterCAP in the age of AI #1 - the MCP adapterThe episode that opens the series and the first pass over @cap-js/mcp, with four of the people building it on the call. Two of the adapter's tools are worked through: describe, the one an MCP client reaches for first to get the overview of what it may do, and query, which the panel establishes as read-only. It also writes the server entry into a local agent's own configuration file, which episode three comes back to as auto-wiring.published 2026-08-07
CAP in the age of AICAP in the age of AISeven live episodes of Hands-on SAP Dev in which DJ Adams works through CAP's AI features with the people who build them, each one a screen-share against a sample project. The first three are @cap-js/mcp: the @mcp annotation on a service, the describe, query and call tools, CQL as the query format, and what authorisation takes out of the tool list. From episode three the run moves to A2A and @cap-js/agents — human approval of an action, agents.md and skills, session persistence, telemetry and sub-agents — and the last two episodes are vector embeddings in CDS, local on SQLite and native on SAP HANA Cloud.published 2026-08-07
Avoid design time CAP server restarts when maintaining local data filesAvoid design time CAP server restarts when maintaining local data filescds watch restarting on every file change is the feature; this is the case where it is not. Editing a CSV seed file mid-edit restarts the server against half-finished data, and the post is about suppressing that without giving up the watch loop. A small friction most people work around silently rather than fix.published 2024-04-26
Avoid design time CAP server restarts when maintaining local data files
Local development changed in @sap/cds-dk 7.9.1, 2024-05-02. Affects Runnable code.
CAP, CDS, CDL, CSN and jq - finding associationsCAP, CDS, CDL, CSN and jq - finding associationsHow associations are actually represented once CDL is compiled into CSN, worked out by parsing the machine-readable form with jq. Useful less as a recipe than as a way in: anything that wants to reason about a CDS model without the compiler has to read CSN, and this is what that looks like from the outside.published 2024-04-16
CAP, CORS and custom headersCAP, CORS and custom headersWhat CAP itself does about CORS, and where it stops. The starting point is a colleague's request and a deliberate constraint: @sap/approuter has full CORS support, but the author wanted to know what the CAP server offers on its own and how to extend it. Ends up covering preflight requests and custom servers, which is the mechanism a frontend hosted outside BTP actually runs into.published 2024-04-11
ISO content for common CAP typesISO content for common CAP typesThe npm package that supplies ISO-standard content — countries, languages, currencies, timezones — for CAP's common types, and how it works underneath. The author flags the length and the reason for it up front, having followed the mechanism further than the question required, which is what makes it worth reading rather than a package announcement.published 2024-03-14
ISO content for common CAP types
Seed data changed in @sap/cds-dk 7.9.1, 2024-05-02. Affects Runnable code.
CAP is important because it's not importantCAP is important because it's not importantAn essay rather than a technique: what CAP actually is, what it gives you, and the case for treating it as foundational precisely because it is not the interesting part of an application. Written in 2019, when that argument still had to be made, and the title is the argument. Also recorded as a Tech Aloud podcast episode and a CodeTalk, both linked from the post.published 2019-11-06
Computed field example in CAPComputed field example in CAPAn answer to a Community question — how to count the entities on the far side of an association — written up as a short post rather than left in a thread. The answer combines CDS with Node.js service events, which is the seam worth noticing: some of what looks like modelling is expressed in the model and some has to be computed when the request arrives, and the boundary between them is not obvious from either side.published 2019-08-21
Computed field example in CAP
Data modelling has changed 3 times since this was published, most recently in @sap/cds 9.9.0, 2026-04-23. Affects A recipe, Runnable code.
Set up VS Code on Chrome OS for local Application Programming Model developmentSet up VS Code on Chrome OS for local Application Programming Model developmentA CAP development environment on a Chromebook, written from preference rather than constraint — the author sets out why Chrome OS is his primary machine before showing the setup. Carries its own updates section noting what has changed since, which for a 2018 post about an operating system is most of it. The interest now is that local CAP development was portable this early.published 2018-10-16
Set up VS Code on Chrome OS for local Application Programming Model development
Local development has changed twice since this was published, most recently in @sap/cds-dk 7.9.1, 2024-05-02. Affects Runnable code.
SAP Cloud Application Programming Model (CAP) - start hereSAP Cloud Application Programming Model (CAP) - start hereThe orientation post for CAP, published in 2018 and revised in 2020 and again in 2021 with help credited to Iwona Hahn — which is the unusual part: a starting-point index that was maintained rather than left to rot, and says so at the top. Read as the shape of what a newcomer was pointed at, and as a marker of how much of that changed inside three years.published 2018-10-10
CAP Node.js Expert Session #6 - The MCP AdapterCAP Node.js Expert Session #6 - The MCP AdapterDaniel Schlachter and DJ Adams add @cap-js/mcp to a bookshop service, inspect its describe, query and action tools, and query the catalogue through an AI agent. The session distinguishes this runtime adapter from the development-time MCP server and demonstrates automatic registration of the running service with a local agent. The recording describes the adapter as beta in July 2026, with read-only queries and writes through unbound actions.
Examine the details of the Model Context Protocol on startupExamine the details of the Model Context Protocol on startupWhat the MCP adapter actually does when a CAP server boots, watched rather than described — the companion to the tutorial that switches it on.
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