ABAP stands for – Advanced Business Application Programming.It is a programming language for developing applications for the SAP R/3 system.
The latest version of ABAP is called ABAP Objects and supports object-oriented programming. SAP will run applications written using ABAP/4, the earlier ABAP version, as well as applications using ABAP Objects.
Without further adieu , lets dive into ABAP.
Note, this tutorial will not go into extensive details on ABAP language constructs (which become very boring to read ) but quickly introduce key concepts to get you started so you can focus your attention on more important topics.
Data Types
Syntax to declare a variable in ABAP –
- DATA Variable_Name Type Variable_Type
Example: - DATA employee_number Type I.
The following is a list of Data Types supported by ABAP
| Data Type | Initial field length | Valid field length | Initial value | Meaning |
Numeric Type
| I | 4 | 4 | 0 | Integer (whole number) |
| F | 8 | 8 | 0 | Floating point number |
| P | 8 | 1 – 16 | 0 | Packed number |
Character types
| C | 1 | 1 – 65535 | ‘ … ‘ | Text field(alphanumeric characters) |
| D | 8 | 8 | ‘00000000’ | Date field(Format: YYYYMMDD) |
| N | 1 | 1 – 65535 | ‘0 … 0’ | Numeric text field(numeric characters) |
| T | 6 | 6 | ‘000000’ | Time field(format: HHMMSS) |
Hexadecimal type
| X | 1 | 11 – 65535 | X’0 … 0′ | 1 – 65535Hexadecimal field |
Processing Data – Assigning Values
a=16.
move 16 to a.
write a to b.
– Arithmetic Operations
compute a = a*100.
Control Statements
Following control statements can be used – – If … EndIf Loop
if [not] exp [ and / or [not] exp ].
……..
[elseif exp.
…….]
[else.
…….]
Endif.
– Case statement
Case variable.
when value1.
………
when value2.
………
[ when others.
………]
Endcase.
Do.
-While loop
While <logical expression>.
…..
…..
Endwhile.
– Do loop
Do <n> times.
…..
…..
Enddo.
Logical Operator
A list of logical operators
- GE or >=
- GT or >
- LE or <=
- LT or <
- EQ or =
- NE or <>ABAP/4 Editor
Finally , here is where you will spent most of your time as a developer creating / modifying programs. Transaction SE38
