SAP ABAP on HANA and its Key Programming Techniques

Introduction to SAP ABAP on HANA

Since SAP has introduced ABAP on HANA, it is required for all ABAP developers to start implementing new coding techniques and transitioning ABAP codes on new HANA platform.

SAP ABAP is not new. It has evolved over years. However, after the introduction of HANA, this programming application has taken a leap ahead in terms of modernization, functionality, user experience and productivity.

Traditional SAP ABAP vs SAP ABAP on HANA

The traditional approach of SAP ABAP used to follow the traditional process of bringing data from the database to the presentation server, doing the bring calculations & filtering and then presenting the filtered data to the user.

While, in HANA, filtering is done inside the database, as the codes do the calculation at the database layer itself. They bring out only those records to the presentation server which are relevant.

Key programming techniques of SAP ABAP on HANA

Open SQL Programming

Open SQL is the first abstraction layer in the ABAP platform. It defines the syntax and semantics used for accessing all relational database systems supported by SAP. Thus, allowing ABAP developers to work in a database-agnostic manner – unless making explicitly use of DB-specific features. With Open SQL programming, you can write open SQL syntax in your ABAP code.  

Core Data Services Views

CDS represents SAP’s next generation of data definition and access for database-centric applications. Technically, CDS uses and extends SQL to capture the business intent.

With CDS, data models are defined and utilized at the database server rather than on the application server. Hence the table result view is created at the database level. 

Another good feature is the compatibility of CDS with Open SQL. Developers can write CDS using Eclipse Oxizen and some other ABAP development tools easily .

ABAP Management Database Procedures (AMDP)

AMDP are directly written in ABAP using AMDP classes and are run on the database directly.

It provides a class-based framework for creating and calling SAP HANA database procedures and functions from the ABAP environment – i.e. AMDP procedures and AMDP functions. ABAP platform is the sole master regarding the lifecycle management (creation, update, deletion, and transport) of such SAP HANA entities.