Introduction to ABAP

Programming
Lesson Objectives

After completing this lesson, participants will be able to –

▪ Understand The Need for ABAP
▪ Know the types of ABAP/4 Programs
▪ Create Reports
▪ Write the Program Code
▪ Test the Program
▪ Combine similar statements to one statement
▪ Illustrate Defining Data Types and Data Objects
▪ Recognize the System Variables

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What is ABAP/4?

ABAP/4 is a 4 generation programming language that you can use multiple ways:
▪ You can select and edit data you want to process in traditional ways via the screens that guide you.
▪ You can write reports using the interactive reporting facility.
ABAP/4 (Advanced Business Application Programming-4) language was developed by SAP to
provide optimal working conditions for application programmers.
It is the sole tool used by SAP to develop its own applications.
SAP customers use ABAP/4 to adapt R/3 standard solutions to specific problems.

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Features of ABAP/4

Multi-Language Support
Supports business data types and operations
Open SQL
Use of sub routines

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Introduction to Reporting

Purpose:
Reports are Programs that read data from the database, processes the data and displays the
data in the required format.

Use:
Reports are used in day to day business environment.
Example:
•Displaying the purchase orders vendor wise.
•Displaying the balance of vendors to be paid till a particular date.

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Program Types

Program type Introductory statement

1 or E Executable Program

I INCLUDE Program

M Module Pool Program

F Function-Pool

S Subroutine Pool

K Class-Pool

J Interface-Pool

T Type Pool

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Report Program

▪The purpose of a report is to read data from the database and write it out.
▪It consists of only two screens.
▪ The first screen is called the selection screen.
• It contains input fields allowing the user to enter criteria for the report.
▪ The second screen is the output screen.
• It contains the list.

▪The list is the output from the report, and usually does not have any input fields.
▪The selection screen is optional. Not all reports have one. However, all reports generate a list.

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Creating Reports
▪ A report consists of individual statements that start with a reserved word and end with a period.

▪ E.g.
WRITE XYZ.
MOVE SALES TO TOTAL_SALES.

▪ The first word of statement (the reserved word) determines the meaning of the whole statement.

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Creating Reports

ABAP/4 report program can be created from the ABAP/4 editor (Transaction Code: SE38).

Creating a report program involves the following steps

▪ Creating the program
▪ Specifying the program attributes
▪ Writing the program code
▪ Testing the program

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Creating Reports

Run transaction SE38 to go to the ABAP/4 Editor.

This enables to create report program.

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Creating Reports - Specifying program Attribute

Program attributes determine to which application a program belongs .

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ABAP Syntax

Rules for ABAP Syntax

▪ The first word in the statement is the ABAP keyword
▪ Each statement ends with a period (.)
▪ Comment line is marked with a ‘*’
▪ Comments from the middle of a line begins with “
▪ The ABAP runtime system does not differentiate between uppercase and lowercase in keywords, additions
and operands

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Writing Program

ABAP/4 code is written from the ABAP/4 editor.

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Test the Program

To test the program, select the ‘Execute’ button.

At runtime, the source code of the ABAP/4 program is compiled.
This compilation process is known as generation.
The generated form of the program is stored in the ABAP/4 repository.
As the program is automatically generated at run time while execution, one does not have to
generate it separately.
The program will be regenerated at each run if some modifications have been made to the code.
The ABAP/4 also provides for various debugging mechanisms

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Demo

Create first ABAP Program and execute it

Example.

REPORT Z.
DATA NAME(25) TYPE C VALUE 'Leena'.
DATA NUMBER TYPE I VALUE 1.

WRITE NUMBER.
WRITE NAME.
Chained Statements

Used to Combine statements

The chain operator used is ‘:’
Example
Statement sequence:
WRITE var1.
WRITE var2.
WRITE var3.
Chain Statement:
WRITE : var1, var2, var3.
Demo on Chain statement

REPORT Z.
DATA: NUMBER TYPE I VALUE 1,
NAME(25) TYPE C VALUE 'Leena'.

WRITE: 'The Number is ', NUMBER.

WRITE: /'The Name is ', name.
Demo

Demo of chain statement

Data Types

A formal variable description is called a data type.

A data type characterizes the technical attributes of all data objects.
Data types can be divided into elementary, reference, and complex types.
Elementary types are not composed of other types.
They are further classified into elementary types of fixed length and of variable length.
There are 13 predefined elementary data types of fixed length in ABAP.

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Predefined ABAP Types

The following types are predefined in every ABAP program:

▪ Predefined Numeric Types
▪ Predefined Character-Like Types
▪ Predefined Byte-Like Types
▪ Predefined date types and time types

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Predefined Numeric Types

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Built-In Character-Like Types

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Built-In Byte-Like Types

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Built-In Date Types and Time Types

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Example on Date and Time Data Types

REPORT z.
DATA DOJ(8) TYPE D VALUE '20181231'. "YYYYMMDD
DATA EXITTIME(6) TYPE T VALUE '235945'. "HHMMSS
DOJ = SY-DATUM. “System data
EXITTIME = SY-UZEIT. “System Time
WRITE: 'The Date is ', DOJ. "DDMMYYYYY
WRITE:/'The Time is ', EXITTIME. "HHMMSS

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Groups of ABAP Standard Data Type

ABAP Standard Data Type(built-in) data types are divided into two groups:
▪ Complete
▪ Incomplete

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Complete ABAP Standard Data Types

The built-in ABAP standard data types that already contain a type-specific, fixed-length byte
sequence (Hexadecimal string )

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Demo

Demo of complete data types

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Incomplete ABAP Standard Data Types

The standard types that do not contain a fixed length are considered incomplete data types.
When they are used to define data objects, you need to specify the length of the variable.

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Demo

Demo of incomplete data types

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Categories of Data Types

Categories of Data Types are as

follows:
▪ Built-In
▪ Local
▪ Global
These types will be used to define
variables (data objects).
Data objects are always defined
with the DATA Keyword.
An ABAP standard type, local type
or global type can be used to
define the type for Data object.

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Local Data Types

Using standard data types, you can declare local data types in the program
They are local to the program in which they are defined and cannot be reused in other programs
The declaration is made using the TYPES statement.
Example:
▪ TYPES number TYPE I.
• DATA num1 TYPE number.
▪ TYPES length TYPE p decimals 2.
• DATA mylen TYPE length
▪ TYPES code(3) TYPE c.
• DATA mycode TYPE code.
▪ TYPES: text10 TYPE c LENGTH 10,
text20 TYPE c LENGTH 20,
number TYPE p LENGTH 8 DECIMALS 2.

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Example – Creating user defined type

REPORT Z.
TYPES GENNAME(20) TYPE C. "USER DEFINED DATA TYPE
"cannot be assigned a value
DATA FIRSTNAME TYPE GENNAME VALUE 'Leena'.
DATA LASTNAME TYPE GENNAME VALUE 'Agarwal'.
WRITE: / FIRSTNAME, LASTNAME.

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Demo

Program on creating and using user defined Data Types

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Global Data Types

A data type defined in the ABAP Dictionary is called global, as it can be used throughout the
entire SAP system concerned.

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Data Types (Contd.).

Reference Types
▪ Describes Data Objects that contain references to other objects
▪ No predefined references
Complex Types
▪ Are composed of other types
▪ Allow to manage and process related data under a single name
▪ No predefined complex Type in ABAP
▪ Further divided into
• Structures – Field strings
• Internal Tables

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Data Types - Complex Data Types

Structures
▪ Sequence of any elementary types, reference types or complex data types
▪ Used in ABAP Programs to group work areas that logically belong together
▪ Example:

TYPES : BEGIN OF address,

name(20) TYPE c,
street(30) TYPE c,
city(20) TYPE c,
END OF address.

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Data objects
Data objects are usually defined
with the DATA statement
After the name of the data object, a
fully-specified type is assigned to it
using the TYPE addition
They are local to the program in
which they are defined, cannot be
reused.

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Data objects

ABAP contains the following kinds of data objects:

Literals
Named Data Objects

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Data objects - Literals

Literals are not created by declarative statements.

Instead, they exist in the program source code.
Like all data objects, they have fixed technical attributes (field length, number of decimal places,
data type), but no name.
They are therefore referred to as unnamed data objects.
Literals are unnamed data objects that you create within the source code of a program.
They are fully defined by their value.
You cannot change the value of a literal.
There are two types of literals: numeric and character.

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Data objects - Literals

Numeric Literals
Examples of numeric literals:
123
-93
+456
Numeric literals in ABAP statements:
DATA number TYPE i VALUE -1234.
WRITE 6789.
MOVE 100 TO number.

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Data objects - Literals

Character Literals
Character literals are sequences of alphanumeric characters in the source code of an ABAP
program enclosed in single quotation marks.
Character literals enclosed in quotation marks have the predefined ABAP type c and are described
as text field literals.
Examples of text field literals:
'Antony Smith'
'69190 Walldorf'

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Data objects – Named data objects

Named Data Objects

Data objects that have a name that you can use to address the ABAP program are known as
named objects. These can be objects of various types, including text symbols, variables and
constants.
▪ Text Symbols are pointers to texts in the text pool of the ABAP program.
• When the program starts, the corresponding data objects are generated from the texts stored in the text pool.
• They can be addressed using the name of the text symbol.
▪ Variables are data objects whose contents can be changed using ABAP statements.
• Variables are declared using the DATA, CLASS-DATA, STATICS, PARAMETERS, SELECT-OPTIONS, and RANGES
statements.
▪ Constants are data objects whose contents cannot be changed.
• They are declared constants using the CONSTANTS statement.

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Data objects – Named data objects

A text symbol is a named data object of an ABAP program that is not declared in the program
itself and instead is defined as a part of the text elements of the program.

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Demo

Demo of Text Symbols

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Data objects – Named data objects

Variables are data objects whose contents can be changed using ABAP statements.
Variables are declared using the DATA, CLASS-DATA, STATICS, PARAMETERS, SELECT-OPTIONS,
and RANGES statements.
• Example:
• DATA name(20) TYPE c.
• Name = ‘Rupal’.
• Name = ‘Rohan’.

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Data objects – Named data objects

Constants are data objects whose contents cannot be changed.

They are declared constants using the CONSTANTS statement.
• Example:
• CONSTANTS pi TYPE p DECIMALS 3 VALUE ‘3.141’.

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Demo

Demo of Constants

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Field Strings in ABAP

A field string is a series of fields grouped together under a common name.

It is equivalent of a structure in the DDIC but is defined within an ABAP/4 program.
The term structure in R/3 applies only to a Data Dictionary object containing a collection of fields.
The term field string applies to a collection of fields defined in an ABAP/4 program.

Two statements are usually used to define field strings in an ABAP/4 program:
▪ data
▪ tables

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Demo

Program on using Field Strings

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Data objects - Operations

Assigning Values
▪ MOVE
• MOVE source TO destination

▪ Examples
− MOVE ‘5.7’ TO number.
− DATA : num1 TYPE i, num2 TYPE i.
− num1 = 10.
− MOVE num1 TO num2.

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Data Objects – Operations (Contd.).

Assigning Values
▪ MOVE-CORRESPONDING
▪ MOVE-CORRESPONDING sourcestru TO deststru
• Examples
DATA : BEGIN OF address,
fname(15) TYPE c VALUE ‘Robert’,
lname(15) TYPE c VALUE ‘David’,
compname(30) TYPE c VALUE ‘ CapGemini Tech’,
number TYPE i VALUE ’72’,
street(30) TYPE c VALUE ‘WhiteField’,
city(10) TYPE c VALUE ‘BANGALORE’,
END OF address.
DATA : BEGIN OF name,
lname(15) TYPE c ,
fname(15) TYPE c ,
END OF name.
MOVE-CORRESPONDING address TO name.

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Demo

Program on Move Corresponding

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Resetting Variables to Initial Values

CLEAR var.
▪ Resets var to appropriate initial value for its type
▪ Cannot use CLEAR to reset a CONSTANT
▪ Has different effect for different Data Types

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CLEAR var.

Resetting Variables to Initial Values(Contd.).

▪ Example
DATA number TYPE i VALUE 10.
WRITE number.
CLEAR number.
WRITE number.

▪ Output : 10 0

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Arithmetic Operations

The following arithmetic operators are used in mathematical expressions:

Operato Meaning
r
+ Addition

_ Subtraction
* Multiplication

/ Division
DIV Integer division
MOD Reminder of Integer Division

** Powers

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System Fields

ABAP system fields are always available in ABAP programs.

The runtime system fills them according to context.
They can then be used in programs to query the system status.
System fields are variables but they should be always treated as constants, and they should only
be read.
The names and data types of the system fields are stored in the ABAP Dictionary in the SYST
structure.
All system fields are addressed using SY field name.

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System Fields

Few System Fields from Structure SY

SY-SUBRC
• Return code for ABAP statements
• 0 - if a statement is executed successfully

SY-UNAME
▪ Logon name of the user
SY-DATUM:
▪ Current System Date
SY-UZEIT:
▪ Current System Time
SY-TCODE
▪ Current Transaction
SY-INDEX
▪ Number of the current loop pass

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Demo

Program on using System Fields

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Write Statement
This statement writes field <f> to the current list in its standard output format.
Syntax
WRITE {[AT] [/][pos][(len|*|**)]} dobj
[UNDER other_dobj]
[NO-GAP]
[int_format_options]
[ext_format_options]
[list_elements]
[QUICKINFO info].

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Positioning Write on Output List

Syntax
WRITE AT [/][<POS>][(<LEN>)] <f>.

where '/' denotes a new line,

<pos> is a number or variable up to three digits long denoting the position on the screen.

<Len> is a number or variable up to three digits long denoting the output length.

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Summary

In this lesson, you have learnt:

▪ The Need for ABAP
▪ The types of ABAP/4 Programs
▪ How to create, test and execute reports
▪ ABAP/4 Language Elements
▪ Chain Statement
▪ Data Types and Data Objects
▪ System Variables

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Review Question

1. The ____ system variable displays the current ABAP program.

▪ Option 1: SY-PRGNAME
▪ Option 2: SY-REPID
▪ Option 3: SY-PROG
▪ Option 4: SY-PROG
2. ____ triggers a page break during list processing.

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