Now that ABAP has comprehensions, there are a number of superpowers that aren’t always obvious. Here, I’ll show you how to change the value of a single field in all, several or just one record of an internal table.
Exceptions can be passed back, method by method, bubbling up, and caught by a method that has nothing to do with the one that raised it. And how will you find it?
There’s nothing worse than seeing code that abuses variables. They’re so delicate, and yet they’re treated so badly. Poor things. And to those who have to read them. The worst way to treat a variable is to make it global. It’s hard to believe, but in 2025 this crime continues to plague our systems. Well, here’s a way to show them some love.
I once wanted to test a class whose constructor took several parameters, each requiring an instance of a different interface. These instances weren’t easy to create and weren’t relevant to the test. After some experimenting, I found a way to work around the problem.
A quick reminder. I thought this was obvious but I keep seeing IF statements that explicitly test the result of a boolean method against ABAP_TRUE or using INITIAL. There’s no need! ABAP is clever in this regard.
Remember how with CALL FUNCTION IN UPDATE TASK you could delay some actions until the moment of a COMMIT?
The FILTER function is new and still relatively unknown. I will give you an example of how it can be used.
Sometimes it’s useful to look at two areas of the code at the same time. If the areas are in different classes, just open them both. But what if they’re in the same class? For example, if you want to make a method inspired by or related to another.
In SAP it’s normal to have tables in the database with a NAME field and another NAME_SEARCH which is filled in with exactly the same thing as NAME but in upper case.
Then, when you want to do case-insensitive searches you use NAME_SEARCH. You don’t need to do this anymore.
In my current project constants are all over the place, with confusing or wrong names. It’s a mess. I’ve found a way to reorganize and rearrange the constants so that the new code can use pretty constants without messing up the old code, which can continue to use the confusing ones.
There’s nothing worse than seeing people abusing variables. They’re so delicate and yet so badly treated, poor things. Here’s a way to show them some love.
Everyone uses blank lines to better organize their code. But where to use them and how many? Let’s talk about that.
Historically, it has always been impossible to jump from one SAP system to another without losing context. Now it’s possible.
The tools that SAP provides for viewing the contents of database tables have always been very sketchy.
