Book Image

Mastering SAP ABAP

By : Paweł Grześkowiak, Wojciech Ciesielski, Wojciech Ćwik
Book Image

Mastering SAP ABAP

By: Paweł Grześkowiak, Wojciech Ciesielski, Wojciech Ćwik

Overview of this book

Advanced Business Application Programming (ABAP) is an established and complex programming language in the IT industry. This book is designed to help you use the latest ABAP techniques and apply legacy constructions using practical examples. You'll start with a quick refresher on language and database concepts, followed by agile techniques for adding custom code to a modern ABAP system. After this, you will get up to speed with the complete ABAP toolset for importing data to and from different environments. Next, you'll learn how to print forms and work with the different ABAP tools for Extensible Markup Language (XML) manipulation. While covering further chapters, you'll gain insights into building stunning UI5 interfaces, in addition to learning how to develop simple apps using the Business Object Processing Framework (BOPF). You will also pick up the technique of handling exceptions and performing testing in ABAP. In the concluding chapters, you can look forward to grasping various techniques for optimizing the performance of programs using a variety of performance analysis tools. By the end of this book, you will have the expertise you need to confidently build maintainable programs in Systems, Applications, and Products (SAP).
Table of Contents (25 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Dedication
About Packt
Contributors
Preface
Index

Data declaration


After learning about the objects in the Data Dictionary, we can start talking about the syntax declaration in ABAP. The easiest way to declare variables is as follows:

data: lv_first_variable TYPE c. 

Variables are named data objects that are used to store values within the allotted memory area of a program. It is good practice to properly name local variables. It is assumed that the first two characters in the variable name determine its use. The first letter indicates whether the variable is global or local. If the local variable starts with l, then in the case of global variables, g is the first letter. The second character determines what type the object is:

  • Variable: v
  • Line: s
  • Internal table: t

Each variable must have a type that describes what is stored inside. A variable may have the following types:

  • Elementary types
  • References
  • User-defined types
  • Generic ABAP types

In the ABAP language, you can use predefined types to define local data types and objects in a program and to specify...