Fundamental Tasks and Tools

The general idea of ABAP Development Tools (ADT) is to provide one Eclipse client that is installed on the developer's PC and can connect to several ABAP back-end systems, even systems of different releases. The connection between the client and the back-end is achieved through the HTTP/RFC protocol.

The development paradigm is still server-based. This means that the development objects are stored solely in the ABAP repository of the back-end system (no local copies via check-in and check-out), and services such as syntax-check, search, and where-used run on the back-end system.

Figure 1: Architecture view of the new integrated development environment for ABAP

The client part of ABAP Development Tools (ADT) provides a set of standard development tools such as the Project Explorer for system browsing and a variety of creation wizards, search, and other views. In addition, there are specific editors available for ABAP development object types, such as ABAP classes, function modules, and other ABAP programs.

The ADT provides the well-known ABAP capabilities (transport, activation, version management, where-used list, and others) combined with an Eclipse-based state-of-the-art UI and user interaction capabilities in a new integrated development environment.

ADT integrates two different types of tools:

• Eclipse-based tools: Front-end tools of this type have been implemented fully using native Eclipse technology means and they integrate seamlessly into the Eclipse environment.
• GUI-based tools: Not all development tools that are available in the new ABAP IDE are integrated into the native Eclipse environment. Some tools are made available in the new IDE through the SAP GUI, which is installed locally together with the Eclipse-based client.