Integrated workplace versus Do-It-Yourself API: The Coverage Analyzer offers you a ready-to-use integrated workplace for measuring code coverage.

The Coverage API offers you the programming tools for collecting and optionally displaying code coverage yourself.

The next couple of points explain which tool to use for the purposes you have in mind.

Control over measurement: With the Coverage API, you can control measurement of code coverage more precisely than you can with the Coverage Analyzer.

With the Coverage Analyzer, you switch on code coverage measurement for an entire application server or entire ABAP System. You let it run while users in test groups perform their tests. The coverage measurement captures all activity by the test users.

This kind of blanket measurement of activity works fine if you have a dedicated test or consolidation system. You can for example let the Coverage Analyzer run during a testing week. Because only test users use the system, the code coverage statistics provide an accurate view of test quality.

But this measurement model works less well if you want to do ad hoc checks of the code coverage of test programs or if you want to precisely limit measurements to test activity.

For such purposes, the Coverage API is the better tool. You can instrument your test programs or your test infrastructure. You can limit measurements quite precisely to the time when a test activity is actually running.

Reuse of test results: It is easier to extract code coverage statistics for reuse from the Coverage API than it is from the Coverage Analyzer.

If you want to reuse coverage statistics for sending e-mails to developers or for external reporting, then the Coverage API is the better tool to use.