Introduction to ABAP and SAP Structure

What is the UOW? SAP operates around the concept of a Unit of Work (UOW) Every transaction code you execute completes a unit of work It’s atomic (cannot be divided). That is, a transaction completes entirely or it does not! A unit of work (transaction code) corresponds to a program (term used loosely)

What’s a Transaction? There is a 1-1 relationship between transaction code and a UOW program A transaction Has a corresponding program Belongs to a package Has an initial screen and possibly many others

Organization of the SAP System (1) It’s big Use the Object Navigator to look at all of the SAP objects (SE80) All sorts of tools to look up and edit applications Typical ‘drill-down’ interface My example will look at transaction code VA01 – create sales order

Organization of the SAP System (2) You have all of the source code and can see / change / enhance how the system works All code is written in a language called ABAP or more recently some is written in Java

Program Attributes (Package) SAP packages, in the simplest case, allow you group programs, database tables, (and other things) together SAP itself is organized into thousands of hierarchical packages 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

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

The Object Navigator It’s a navigator to all SAP ‘objects’ (SE80) The ‘Application Hierarchy’ is at the top and contains packages

Object Navigator (Lookup Example 1) Sales and Distribution (SD) / SALES is an Application Component

Object Navigator (Lookup Example 2) Which contains the program SAPMV45A (Sales Order Processing)

Object Navigator (Lookup Example 3) And the transaction code VA01 is bound to this program SAPMV45A SE93 is used to look up a program based on the transaction code

Object Navigator (Lookup Example 4) Transaction code VA01 belongs to the package SAPMV45A Having a default screen number of 101

Object Navigator (Lookup Example 4) Screen 101 from the Object Navigator is the first screen to create a sales order

Object Navigator (Lookup Example 5) Which when run gives us a screen simulation

Object Navigator (Lookup Example 6) Which looks is our first screen to create a sales order (VA01)

How do we Customize? We modify SAP programs via ‘enhancement sections’ and other means We create custom programs We copy entire transaction codes and ‘make our own

Enhancement Sections They are entry points into SAP programs that allow us to add our own code before or after some SAP task executes

Creating a Custom Program It’s a unified interface for creating, debugging, modifying, deploying, … ABAP programs Use transaction code SE38

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

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

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

Review (A First ABAP Program -4) Run it (F8) or (Program / Test / Direct Processing A first report is displayed

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

APAP Program Attributes (Program Type) ABAP has it’s own program types Executable programs can be run independently of a transaction code Module Pools are made up of processing steps and are executed from a transaction code And other types of programs

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”

The ABAP Editor It’s Visual Studio for SAP A code editor The clipboard works as we would expect We can run and test programs inside of the ABAP editor

ABAP Program Names SAP has naming conventions for programs Local programs should ALWAYS begin with the letters Y or Z (for customer)

ABAP Syntax (Introduction) Like most programming languages, we have variables, statements (sequence, decision, loops) The language looks like the old COBOL language