ABAP Tools

Following changes refer to the Eclipse-based ABAP Development Tools for SAP HANA as well as the GUI-based SQL performance monitoring tools .

ABAP Development Tools (Eclipse-based)

Searching ABAP Source Code

In source-based repository objects (like classes, programs, function pools) of an ABAP project, you can run a full text search inside the ABAP source code of the entire ABAP system. For this, your system has to be connected with an SAP HANA database.

ABAP Debugger

The following new features have been added to the debugger of SAP HANA Development Tools:

  • Setting ABAP Watchpoints: When debugging ABAP code, you can use watchpoints to track the value of individual ABAP variables. The ABAP debugger stops as soon as the value of a watched variable has changed. Furthermore, you can specify conditions for watchpoints. The debugger then additionally checks whether this condition is fulfilled.
  • Changing Internal Tables: ABAP debugger's tables view has been enhanced to support changing, deleting, and inserting rows in internal tables.

Further Refactoring Options and ABAP Quick Fixes

Further refactoring functionalities and ABAP Quick fixes enable you to extract, convert, or declare code elements.

Displaying Enhancement Implementations

In the ABAP source code, you can display the coding of enhancement implementations in the enhancement popup. The corresponding enhancement options are highlighted with the ICON_MODIFY marker.

Previewing Message Long Text

You can preview the long text that was added to messages of an ABAP project.

Advanced SQL and View Building Tools

As a part of Core Data Services (CDS) feature, the SAP NetWeaver AS for ABAP Development Tools provides some extended tool functions for defining CDS entities

Editor Support for Additional Language Elements

The editor supports now an extended set of keywords in CDS views. It provides support for:

  1. Associations
    • Defining associations within the CDS views and exposing them in projects lists
    • Usage of associations in SELECT-, FROM-, WHERE- and HAVING-clauses
    • Defining filter conditions for associations.
  2. Code Pushdown
    • Extended ON- and WHERE-conditions for Joins
    • Aggregation functions
    • CASE statements
    • SQL functions
    • Arithmetic expressions

Graphical Editor for CDS View Entities

In addition to the text-based editor, a graphical read-only editor for CDS view entities is available. You can take advantage of this complementary tool to obtain an overview of the structure of the DDL source.

SQL Performance Monitoring Tools (GUI-based)

Performing Runtime Checks with the Runtime Check Monitor

The Runtime Check Monitor allows you to execute a limited range of runtime checks in a productive ABAP system. In each specific check, you can collect runtime-relevant information during program execution.

You can use these specific runtime checks to perform a final, remaining cleanup of the ABAP code – for example, following the corresponding static code checks.

The Runtime Check Monitor provides the following runtime checks:

Check Meaning
Empty table in FOR_ALL_ENTRIES clause

This check records all events where the internal table itab in the clause … FOR ALL ENTRIES IN itab... within a SELECT statement is empty.

You can use this check to identify issues leading to poor performance or high memory consumption.
Missing ORDER BY or SORT after SELECT

This check records all events where SELECT statements without an ORDER BY clause or subsequent SORT are followed by statements that require the result set (internal tables) to be sorted.

You can use this check to identify those parts of the ABAP source code that may not function correctly after migrating to another database system, such as SAP HANA DB.