Introduction ABAP Programs

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ABAP (History) Acronym:

Allgemeiner BerichtsAufbereitungsProzessor

Generic report preparation rocessor Advanced Business Application Programming

Created back in the 1980s Looks very much like COBOL SAP itself, is written in ABAP

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ABAP Editor(Creating the Code) My opinion – it’s a pretty good

development environment Supports intellisense, code highlighting,

and a robust debugger Most of you have never seen COBOL,

but it looks like COBOL!

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Introduction to the ABAP Editor It’s a unified interface for creating,

debugging, deploying, … ABAP programs

Use transaction code SE38

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Activation Note that you must activate ABAP with

the keys I gave you before you use the software for the first time.

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Review (A First ABAP Program -1) Create a program

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Review (A First ABAP Program -2) Edit the program statements

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Review (A First ABAP Program -3) Activate the application (Program /

Activate)

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Review (A First ABAP Program -4) Run it (F8) or (Program / Test / Direct

Processing A first report is displayed

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APAP Program Attributes (Introduction) Every program that you create has

metadata

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APAP Program Attributes (Program Type) ABAP has it’s own program types Executable programs can be run

independently of a transaction code Remember program types from the last

lecture Our first program will be an executable

program Module Pools are made up of

processing steps and are executed from a transaction code

And other types of programs

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APAP Program Attributes (Program Status / Application) Program status controls whether the

program is a test (local)program deployed to production systems

Application controls where in the SAP hierarchy the program “lives”

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ABAP Program Attributes(Package) A program belongs to a package and

has an owner The package is defined when the program

is saved for the first time Use package $TMP for our “local”

packages SAP packages, in the simplest case,

allow you group code (applications) together

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ABAP Program Attributes (Package) Use Local Page $TMP for our work

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The ABAP Editor It’s Visual Studio for SAP

A code editor The clipboard works as we would expect Works as you would expect A list of icons appears on pages 77-79

Only activated programs can be run

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ABAP Program Names SAP has naming conventions for

programs Local programs should ALWAYS begin

with the letter Z (for customer)

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ABAP Syntax (Introduction) Like most programming language, we

have statements as the atomic unit of work ABAP statements always end with a period

(thanks COBOL)

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ABAP Syntax (Getting Help) Highlight a keyword in the Code Editor

and press F1 to get the keyword documentation

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ABAP Keywords (REPORT) REPORT rep.

It’s the first statement in an executable program

It can also be replaced with the keyword PROGRAM

Following the report keyword appears the report name

Example

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ABAP Keywords (WRITE 1) The statement writes the content to the

output stream (current page of the current list)

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ABAP Keywords (WRITE 2) String literals appear in single quotes Including a “/” triggers a new line

WRITE / writes a new line

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ABAP Keywords (SKIP, ULINE) SKIP write a blank line ULINE draws a horizontal rule