Being used to develop in Java and C++, the way transaction SE24 forces you to navigate between each of its parts and the fact that every method has its own include was very confusing to me when I first started using it. Why does SAP always have to make things so complicated? I eventually got used to it.

At some point in time SE24 introduced the option source-code based which shows the class and all its methods in a single text. But for some reason I never felt comfortable using it.

Imagine that you’re editing one of those ancient programs with thousands of lines (yes because today you know that it’s wrong not to modularize (it’s a sin really) your methods (yes because today you always use methods) don’t have more than 200 lines).

You you call a function via RFC you need to provide the RFC DESTINATION for the remote system:

CALL FUNCTION ‘ZSNEEZED’
  DESTINATION ’sistema_longe_daqui’.

What if, for some reason, the function running in the remote system needs to call a function in the original system? How would you do it?

Although a substantial part of an ABAP programmer time is spent debugging code, most programmers I know don’t invest much in getting to know the ABAP debugger. Maybe because they spent too many years working with its previous version which was truly archaic and worthless. But the new one can do much more than you usually ask of it. And Abapinho intends to teach you how.

Today I’ll teach you just a simple key.

When you debug you use F5 key to move to the next statement (or go inside a sub-routine). But imagine an IF with multiple conditions:

IF A = 1 AND B = 2 AND C = 3.
  WRITE 'I like the word glauc'.
ENDIF.

When you debug through that IF using F5 and one of the expressions is false you’ll step out of the IF without knowing which of the three was false.

But the new debugger has a new very neat functionality which can help you to better understand what happened there.

Every once in a while I find yet another hidden SAP virtue. I just found out that there is a transaction which, for a given word in a given language, will help you translate it to another language by showing you which other translations already exist for that same word.

How cool is that? Ok, it’s not Google Translate, but it’s a nice help.

Oh, I almost forgot. The transaction is called STERM.

Sometimes ABAP SQL doesn’t allow you to do something you’d be able to do using the database’s native SQL. It can still be done.

We’ve all sorted internal tables to use AT NEW on a LOOP. But starting from 7.40, we can use GROUP BY on LOOPs.

The ability to group by values based on expressions or even methods is great.

The grouping is done on the first LOOP and can be processed afterwards. Try running the code below and I bet you’ll be as impressed as I was.

You just found a bug in a standard FORM (or FM or METHDO):

FORM EQUAL_VALUE CHANGING W_DATE TYPE SYDATUM.
  W_DATE = SY-DATUM - 1.
ENDFORM.

You report the error to SAP but you know it will take them several days, weeks or months to publish a correction. And you need it corrected right now.

You decide to act.

So you use the implicit enhancement at the start of the FORM to replace the standard code with your own (just until the correction arrives, of course):

Checkpoints is a very powerful ABAP framework which almost nobody uses. Why? Probably for the same reason hardly anyone listens to Sun Ra and knows that Frank Zappa has 102 albums. Because, even though really good, it’s obscure and not commercial. Checkpoints are, indeed, really good and not commercial. But they should be more like Mozart and the Beach Boys which are both good and commercial.