Data objects are the physical units with which ABAP statements work at runtime. The contents of a data object occupy memory space in the program.
ABAP - Wikipedia. ABAP (Advanced Business Application Programming, originally Allgemeiner Berichts- Aufbereitungs- Prozessor, German for . It is currently positioned, alongside Java, as the language for programming the SAP Application Server, which is part of the Net. Weaver platform for building business applications. Introduction. It was originally the report language for SAP R/2, a platform that enabled large corporations to build mainframe business applications for materials management and financial and management accounting. ABAP used to be an abbreviation of Allgemeiner Berichts. Aufbereitungs. Prozessor, German for .
ABAP Editor: Program Structure. ABAP Editor: Program Structure; ABAP Debugger: SetUp. ABAP Geek 2 -- ABAP program types Horst Keller, SAP. The following matrix shows all ABAP program types and their supported features. Creating Type Group and using it in the ABAP program. By Ashish Trivedi, Infosys. Introduction: This document explains the creation of type group and its use in ABAP. Types of ABAP programs. As in other programming languages, an ABAP program is either an executable unit or a library, which. ABAP report types are of 7 types. ABAP report types are available in reports attributes screen. Function group (containing function modules). The source code of an ABAP program consists of comments and ABAP statements. Comments are distinguished by the preceding signs * (at the beginning. The Structure of an ABAP Program should include the following: An Introductory part, A Global declaration part Processing blocks– which consist of including.
ABAP was one of the first languages to include the concept of Logical Databases (LDBs), which provides a high level of abstraction from the basic database level(s). The ABAP language was originally used by developers to develop the SAP R/3 platform.
It was also intended to be used by SAP customers to enhance SAP applications . The language was geared towards more technical customers with programming experience. ABAP remains as the language for creating programs for the client- server R/3 system, which SAP first released in 1. As computer hardware evolved through the 1.
SAP's applications and systems were written in ABAP. By 2. 00. 1, all but the most basic functions were written in ABAP. In 1. 99. 9, SAP released an object- oriented extension to ABAP called ABAP Objects, along with R/3 release 4. SAP's current development platform Net. Weaver supports both ABAP and Java.
ABAP has an abstraction between the business applications, the operating system and database. This ensures that applications do not depend directly upon a specific server or database platform and can easily be ported from one platform to another. SAP Netweaver currently runs on UNIX (AIX, HP- UX, Solaris, Linux), Microsoft Windows, i. OS on IBM System i (formerly i. Series, AS/4. 00), and z/OS on IBM System z (formerly z. Series, S/3. 90).
Supported databases are IBM DB2, Informix, Max. DB, Oracle, and Microsoft SQL Server (support for Informix was discontinued in SAP Basis release 7. They are not stored in separate external files like Java or C++ programs. In the database all ABAP code exists in two forms: source code, which can be viewed and edited with the ABAP Workbench tools; and generated code, a binary representation somewhat comparable with Java bytecode.
The type of an ABAP program determines, for example, which declarations and processing blocks a program can contain and how it can be executed in.
ABAP programs execute under the control of the runtime system, which is part of the SAP kernel. The runtime system is responsible for processing ABAP statements, controlling the flow logic of screens and responding to events (such as a user clicking on a screen button); in this respect it can be seen as a Virtual Machine comparable with the Java VM.
A key component of the ABAP runtime system is the Database Interface, which turns database- independent ABAP statements (. The database interface handles all the communication with the relational database on behalf of ABAP programs; It also contains extra features such as buffering of tables and frequently accessed data in the local memory of the application server. SAP systems and landscapes. A system consists of a central relational database and one or more application (. An SAP system contains at least one instance but may contain more, mostly for reasons of sizing and performance. In a system with multiple instances, load balancing mechanisms ensure that the load is spread evenly over the available application servers. Installations of the Web Application Server (landscapes) typically consist of three systems: one for development; one for testing and quality assurance; and one for production.
The landscape may contain more systems (e. QA); nevertheless three is the most common configuration. ABAP programs are created and undergo first testing in the development system. Afterwards they are distributed to the other systems in the landscape. These actions take place under control of the Change and Transport System (CTS), which is responsible for concurrency control (e.
QA and production systems. The Web Application Server consists of three layers: the database layer; the application layer; and the presentation layer. These layers may run on the same or on different physical machines. The database layer contains the relational database and the database software. The application layer knowledge contains the instance or instances of the system. All application processes, including the business transactions and the ABAP development, run on the application layer.
The presentation layer handles the interaction with users of the system. Online access to ABAP application servers can go via a proprietary graphical interface, which is called . Examples for these are: SAP. The normal way of executing ABAP code in the SAP system is by entering a transaction code (for instance, VA0. Transactions can be called via system- defined or user- specific, role- based menus.
They can also be started by entering the transaction code directly into a command field, which is present in every SAP screen. Transactions can also be invoked programmatically by means of the ABAP statements CALL TRANSACTION and LEAVE TO TRANSACTION. The general notion of a transaction is called a Logical Unit of Work (LUW) in SAP terminology. Each screen also has a . In SAP documentation the term .
The first word in a statement is called an ABAP keyword. Each statement ends with a period. Words must always be separated by at least one space. Statements can be indented as you wish. With keywords, additions and operands, the ABAP runtime system does not differentiate between upper and lowercase. Statements can extend beyond one line.
You can have several statements in a single line (though this is not recommended). Lines that begin with asterisk * in the first column are recognized as comment lines by the ABAP runtime system and are ignored. Double quotations marks (. The availability depends on the release of the ABAP system.
ABAP Workbench. It contains different tools for editing programs. The most important of these are (transaction codes are shown in parentheses): ABAP Editor for writing and editing reports, module pools, includes and subroutine pools (SE3. ABAP Dictionary for processing database table definitions and retrieving global types (SE1. Menu Painter for designing the user interface (menu bar, standard toolbar, application toolbar, function key assignment) (SE4.
Screen Painter for designing screens and flow logic (SE5. Function Builder for function modules (SE3. Class Builder for ABAP Objects classes and interfaces (SE2.
The Object Navigator (transaction SE8. ABAP Development Tools.
The Web IDE is installed on the ABAP system and is provided via the web server that is part of the SAP system. The developer uses a Web browser to access the Web IDE. It is closely linked with the ABAP Workbench in that any reference to data (e. Developers use the ABAP Dictionary transactions (directly or through the SE8. Object Navigator inside the ABAP Workbench) to display and maintain this metadata.
When a dictionary object is changed, a program that references the changed object will automatically reference the new version the next time the program runs. Because ABAP is interpreted, it is not necessary to recompile programs that reference changed dictionary objects. A brief description of the most important types of dictionary objects follows: Tables are data containers that exist in the underlying relational database. In the majority of cases there is a 1- to- 1 relationship between the definition of a table in the ABAP Dictionary and the definition of that same table in the database (same name, same columns). These tables are known as . There are two types of non- transparent tables: . Pooled tables are often small tables holding for example configuration data.
Each row of H would then be physically grouped with the related rows from D inside a . This type of clustering, which is designed to improve performance, also exists as native functionality in some, though not all, relational database systems. Indexes provide accelerated access to table data for often used selection conditions. Every SAP table has a .
Additional indexes (unique or non- unique) may be defined; these are called . Since views are virtual tables (they refer to data in other tables) they do not take a substantial amount of space. Structures are complex data types consisting of multiple fields (comparable to struct in C/C++). Data elements provide the semantic content for a table or structure field.
For example, dozens of tables and structures might contain a field giving the price (of a finished product, raw material, resource, ..). All these fields could have the same data element . For example, the data element PRICE could have an assigned domain that defines the price as a numeric field with two decimals. Domains can also carry semantic content in providing a list of possible values.
For example, a domain . The ABAP runtime provides implicit assistance (by listing all values for the field, e. The program displays a list on the screen. In this case, the list consists of the single line . The REPORT statement indicates that this program is a report. This program could be a module pool after replacing the REPORT statement with PROGRAM.
Chained statements. The common part of the statements is written to the left of the colon, the differing parts are written to the right of the colon and separated by commas. The colon operator is attached directly to the preceding token, without a space (the same applies to the commas in the token list on, as can be seen in the examples below). Chaining is often used in WRITE statements. WRITE accepts just one argument, so if for instance you wanted to display three fields from a structure called FLIGHTINFO, you would have to code: WRITEFLIGHTINFO- CITYFROM.
WRITEFLIGHTINFO- CITYTO. WRITEFLIGHTINFO- AIRPTO. Chaining the statements results in a more readable and more intuitive form: WRITE: FLIGHTINFO- CITYFROM,FLIGHTINFO- CITYTO,FLIGHTINFO- AIRPTO.