ABAP

 ABAP / ABAP OO development is extremely crucial in addressing any solution gaps, RICEFs or custom development on any SAP project. I believe it is essential to learn a lot of different programming aspects during an SAP implementation project and follow certain guidelines that may make an SAP ABAP professional very successful in her career.

The initial element of any ABAP development project begins with meeting the finished users or business experts and understanding the business enterprise requirements that must be implemented in the SAP system through the realization phase. The best approach is always to conduct workshops to gather all the business enterprise requirements. Make sure that if any SAP function consultants are involved than they're in the meetings as well. After every one of the business requirements are collected, either an SAP functional consultant or business expert will write a detailed functional specification. Review the functional specification before the document has all the details, different business scenarios and expected goals clearly defined. A well-defined functional specification should contain UML diagrams and test case scenarios. It is very important with an official signoff on the functional specification before continuing with design and development.

In ideal case, your SAP Project Lead or ABAP Development Manager should have created a programming standards and guidelines document. Review this document so that you follow the naming conventions for function modules, classes, dictionary objects, software components, name spaces and proxies (if using SAP XI / PI), program input/output parameters, etc just to mention a few. After the guideline for the project helps maintain a constant coding approach and also helps other functional and technical analysts to see and debug your code. ABAP objects naming should begin with Z when it will be migrated to SAP production system and Y when it will not be migrated to the production system.

The test case documents are compiled by the business enterprise experts or functional SAP consultants in most SAP implementation projects. But on some SAP implementation projects a programmer might be required to write test cases. Before writing an examination case review the functional specification document thoroughly and review the written test case with the business enterprise users or functional consultants. Get a sign-off as stated in most steps in this article. As an ABAP Development Manager for many different SAP implementation projects, my goal has been to keep my team motivated and always cover the team against any change of scope on the development tasks. Having a sign-off at each phase of a SAP custom development or enhancement tasks always helps the SAP implementation team and project management team retain in sync which is a vital to accomplish the SAP implementation in time and budget.

Browse the functional specification and list all of the development objects that might be had a need to implement the mandatory functionality in the SAP system. First step is always to draw a flowchart and review with technical and business experts. The technical design document includes a specialized overview, listing of new database objects, ABAP objects that can be reused, a data model and class diagram (if using ABAP OO classes). It is recommended to really have a rough prototype in the sandbox system (Development system if no SAP sandbox system is available) if the development being done is complex or if the finish deliverable is not well defined. You need to then review your prototype with functional experts and business users. Make sure that the ABAP Development team lead or manager signs off on the prototype. If effort required to accomplish the ABAP programming task is not presented and approved by the senior project management then this would have been a good time to have the development estimate and timeline approved.

During this you will be creating development objects and implementing the code in the SAP development system. Before you begin, if prototype was done in the sandbox system then analyze the prototype and design specification. Remember that quality and reusability of existing ABAP objects are far more important than strictly following the look specification. Decide which existing dictionary objects may be reused with this topic. If new dictionary objects or classes must be created then ensure these objects may be extended and reused for other development tasks. It could require extra effort to develop objects which are reusable and flexible.

This one-time effort for building reusable ABAP objects through the course of a development project could save a lot of work for programming similar objects that could otherwise utilize already-built objects. Review your approach with an SAP technical team lead or a development manager on your own project before deviating from the technical design specification and implementing your personal ideas. If you should be involved in SAP XI (now Process Integration) related tasks or creating enterprise services then this is the best area where you are able to reuse existing objects. Review the message types that already exist within your SAP business unit and see if any existing messages may be extended with new fields. Review with the team lead whether the communication must certanly be synchronous or asynchronous when you generate proxies.

SAP ABAP (or JAVA if taking care of SAP Netweaver) development best practices must certainly be followed throughout the development lifecycle of the project. Although this aspect depends on your own project technical manager, I know have maintained a checklist for developers in my team on all projects and it has been a tremendous success in delivering high-quality output on all development tasks. Here really are a few best practices worth adopting in your project. Check whether you adhere to any or all naming conventions as described in the programming standards set for your implementation project. Include comments in your code allowing somebody else to easily understand your programs. This is specially helpful once you work in large teams and multiple people use same objects.

Make sure that you have checked for user authorization if you are building transactions or web user interfaces that may require human interaction. Check that you do not have ABAP code segments that could take a hit on performance like nested loops, nested select statements (use views if desired), excess database commits (persistent objects or buffering alternatives may be a good option), etc. Field symbols really are a great asset when it comes to processing internal tables and also variables with unknown data types which are resolved at runtime. Field symbols are much like concept of using pointers in OO programming landscape. See if all exceptions are handled and error messages are communicated accurately to the finish users. As an ABAP programmer, it must be well accepted by since short dumps shouldn't be OK to occur. Each one of these do occur in unknown special case scenarios the short dumps must certanly be fixed.