ABAP Workbench: Introduction

Prepared by Jennifer Kreie

New Mexico State University

Prerequisite knowledge for this series of lessons in ABAP

This series of lessons are written with the assumption that you have had at least one programming course in
which you learned about basic programming concepts: variables, constants, data types, and commonly used
control structures, such as IF .. ELSE, LOOP, and CASE. This series of lessons is not an introduction to
programming but an introduction to ABAP. You can go through these lessons without knowing programming
basics simply by following the examples and instructions but you probably wont understand much of the code
you type.
The lessons are also written with the assumption that you are familiar with relational database concepts and
commonly used SQL commands. If you have not had a course that covered relational database concepts, you
should find a database management or systems analysis book and read the chapter(s) about data modeling and
database design or go to YouTube and search for database Kreie and view a series of videos about database
fundamentals.
An Introduction to SAP and ABAP
SAP (Systems, Applications & Products in data processing) is a software company that develops and sells all
the components of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, as well as add-on applications, such as data
mining (a.k.a. business intelligence), supply chain management, customer relationship management, and others.
SAP has the largest market share for ERP software. Oracle Corporation is second in market share. FYI, the
company says the letters, not the word sap.
SAP has a 3-tier architecture: presentation layer, application layer, and database layer. The presentation layer
may be delivered through SAPs client-side GUI or through a Web browser. The application layer is handled by
SAP Web Application Server. The application layer handles communication between the presentation layer and
the database layer. The database layer is handled by the DBMS, which can vary depending on the choice of the
company with SAP installed. The DBMS could be Oracle, DB2, MaxDB, etc.

ABAP Workbench is the development environment provided in SAP for creating and modifying programs that run
in SAP. The development environment has a rich set of features to assist developers. In recent years SAP has

ABAP Workbench: Introduction

Prepared by Jennifer Kreie
New Mexico State University

offered NetWeaver as a development environment that supports both Java and ABAP languages for web
development. ABAP Workbench also provides some web tools. Unlike programs in other languages, such as
Java, ABAP programs do not run outside the SAP environment.
ABAP
ABAP is the programming language developed by SAP and it was used to create the suite of software offered by
SAP. ABAP was originally similar to COBOL and other procedural languages. Over time ABAP has been
enhanced and now supports object-oriented programming features.
The ABAP language:
Has the basic predefined data types: characters (c), numeric (n), integer (i), date (d), floating point (f),
etc. (Click this link to see help.sap.com for the complete list.)
Supports multilingual interpretation of input and output screens through the use of text elements (list
headers, selection texts, text symbols
Supports fast, large dataset processing.
The ABAP Workbench helps developers by:
Enforcing certain conventions, such as naming conventions and the use of organizational features such
as packages and transport requests.
Providing helpful features such as Pattern which provides a template for writing commonly used ABAP
statements, such as WRITE, CASE, CALL, etc.
Providing forward navigation that allows the developer to jump from ABAP code to the definition of a
table, another program and so forth.
Providing interfaces to help find information from the SAP data dictionary (metadata), to see listings of
classes and objects, and more.
Some general SAP terms to know
Client

In SAP a client is not a customer. (You just have to get used to this term as it is used in SAP.) A
business unit with its own financial statements such as subsidiary within a corporation is referred to as a
client.

Transaction code
Each interface (one or more screens) in SAP has a transaction code assigned. For
example, transaction code F.01 is a financial statements screen that shows summary financial data
from the general ledger accounts. Transaction code XD03 shows information about each customer
(a.k.a. Business Partner). There are hundreds of transactions codes but if you work with SAP in a
business, for example, as an accountant, you probably would use no more than 12 to 24 transaction
codes in your work.
Basis

The database and supporting platform for the SAP applications is called Basis. If you work for a
company with SAP, at least one person will be the Basis administrator (similar to database
administrator).

Dynpros A series of dialog screens that complete a unit of work in SAP. For example, when you create a
purchase order, the dialog screens you use to do this make up a dynpro.
Master data Master data are fairly stable with occasional changes. These data support the daily processes of
a business which generate transaction data.
Transaction data Transactional data are generated routinely from the processes a business performs
processes such as creating a sales order for a customer, order supplies from a vendor, receiving

ABAP Workbench: Introduction

Prepared by Jennifer Kreie
New Mexico State University

payments from customers, etc. The data about the customer and vendor are master data since a new
record customer or vendor is not created when an order is created. However, the sales order and the
purchase order data are transaction data. A new record (or records) is created whenever a sales order
is taken, for example.
Logical database This is SAPs term for a predefined dataset that combines data from several tables and
defines how the tables are joined. Logical databases are usually defined for a functional area or a
specific SAP module or program.
IDES

This acronym stands for Internet Demonstration and Evaluation System and it is a client used for SAP
software training. There is a lot of disparate sample data in this client. In other words, the data does not
represent one corporation. For example, there is data about manufacturing but there is also data about
airline flights. Some of the data is also incomplete. You may not be able to trace the sequence of
records that a cash-to-cash cycle would normally create. FYI, the cash-to-cash cycle is the cycle of
money spent buying raw materials, manufacturing a product, selling the product, and receiving payment
for the product.

Resources & References

ABAP Basics, Gunther Farber and Julia Kirchner, SAP PRESS/Galileo Press, 2007.
ABAP Objects: An Introduction to Programming SAP Applications, Horst Keller and Sascha Kruger, SAP
PRESS/Pearson Education Limited, 2002.
Babelfish.yahoo.com (for language translations)
Discover ABAP, Karl-Heinz Khnhauser, SAP PRESS/Galileo Press, 2008.
HELP.SAP.COM

Terms you should know

ABAP Workbench................................................................................................................................................... 1
Basis....................................................................................................................................................................... 2
Client...................................................................................................................................................................... 2
Dynpros.................................................................................................................................................................. 2
IDES....................................................................................................................................................................... 3
Logical database.................................................................................................................................................... 2
Master data............................................................................................................................................................. 2
NetWeaver.............................................................................................................................................................. 1
object-oriented........................................................................................................................................................ 2
procedural language............................................................................................................................................... 2
SAP........................................................................................................................................................................ 1
text elements.......................................................................................................................................................... 2
Transaction code.................................................................................................................................................... 2
Transaction data..................................................................................................................................................... 2