What is SAP ABAP?
SAP(Systems, Applications, and Products in data processing) is an ERP(Enterprise Resource Planning) type of software that is used to manage the daily affairs of a large company. Advanced Business Application Programming or ABAP is the fourth-generation programming language and is used to allow the mass-processing of data in SAP business applications. It is possible to build enterprise applications for a larger business and financial institution with the help of the SAP ABAP platform. So, SAP ABAP will protect from organizational data breaches and security threats to information leakage.
SAP ABAP is suitable for integrated applications that a company will use to collect, manage, store, and interpret data from various functional areas. It will act as a single data source and share data within all the units of an organization. It helps the customers for running their business with greater accuracy
What is meant by data dictionary in ABAP?
- ABAP data dictionary represents metadata(i.e. data about data) that is present inside the SAP database in addition to the metadata maintained by the database. Data dictionary allows the necessary description of all the data without redundancies that are used in the system. New or updated information will be provided automatically for all the system components. This ensures data security, data consistency, and data integrity.
- It is used to describe the logical structures of certain objects that can be used in the development of the ABAP/4 application and it can also display the underlying relational database in tables.
- The data dictionary is useful in creating and managing data definitions as well as in creating Tables, Domains, Views, Data Elements, and Types. Also, it supports a few standard functions for editing screen fields like assigning input help to the field of a screen
What is Web Dynpro for ABAP?
Web Dynpro(WD) is an SAP standard user interface technology for ABAP and is used for developing the web-based application in SAP using the development concepts and techniques of SAP. It provides a front-end web user interface for connection with backend SAP R/3 systems to access data and also for reporting. It has a graphical development environment along with a runtime environment that has specific development tools that are combined in the ABAP Workbench
What are smart forms in SAP?
SAP Smart Forms is a tool used for printing and sending documents. It is useful in the development of forms, e-mails, PDF files, and documents for the Internet. This tool offers an interface for building and maintaining the layout and logic of a form. SAP delivers a form selection for business processes such as those used in Sales and Distribution(SD), Customer Relationship Management(CRM), Human Resources(HR), and Financial Accounting(FI).
This tool permits you for form modification with the help of simple graphical tools rather than using any programming tool. It implies that a user without any programming knowledge will be able to easily configure these smart forms with data for a business process
What are the different ABAP/4 editors?
The two ABAP/4 editors are:
- SE38: It allows you for the program creation and to view the online reports and essentially performs all the object development in ABAP/4 editor.
- SE80: It supports additional features like the creation of packages, module pool, function group, programs, classes, and BSP(Business Server Page) applications
What is ITS in SAP? What are the merits of ITS?
ITS(Internet Transaction Server) in SAP is the necessary link between the internet and the SAP R/3 system. It is integrated into the kernel that belongs to SAP Netweaver Application Server. ITS creates an interface between the R/3 system and HTTP server for converting screen-provided data by the R/3 system into HTML files and vice versa. Because of integration with ITS, a web browser is able to do direct communication with an SAP System. ITS is accessed with the help of “Internet Communication Manager”.
Merits of ITS are:
- It is possible to develop and test the comprehensive web transaction in the R/3 system.
- It acts upon all transaction components, including those components used outside of ITS.
- In the R/3 system, using automatic language processing utilization of language-dependent HTML documents can be done during runtime
Explain about lock objects in SAP ABAP.
Lock Object is an ABAP Dictionary provided feature used for synchronizing the access to the same data by multiple users or programs. Lock Objects in SAP ABAP are used for avoiding inconsistency during data insertion or modification in the database. Tables whose data records are gonna locked must be defined with their key fields in a Lock Object.
Consider an example for the usage of Lock Object, suppose a travel agent wants to book a place in flight. Also, the customer wishes to fly to a particular city on a particular day with a particular airline. The booking will be possible only if there exists a free place on the flight. The database entry for the flight must be locked through access prevention for other transactions to avoid the possibility of overbooking. This will make sure that a user can find out the number of free places, do the booking, and change the available number of free places without the data being changed at the same time by another transaction
What do you mean by the workflow in SAP ABAP?
In the SAP system, workflows in business are used for executing business processes in applications. Workflows are the SAP system’s essential component that helps in business process design, it can be either a simple process or a complex repeated business process. These are predefined in the SAP R/3 system and the user is allowed to create their new workflows. It also permits the users for managing business processes in the most efficient manner.
Workflows will make sure that the correct information will be sent to the right person at the right time in a proper sequence. It is a tool for business process automation and will uniformly work across all the applications. It is suitable for business processes that involve multiple people or a group of people
What are Smart forms in SAP ABAP?
The smart form allows to create, design, and maintain forms for bulk printing in SAP Systems. SAP smart forms will support printers, e-mail, fax, or the Internet as an output medium. We can embed images, texts, barcodes, tables, and ABAP codes with smart forms. On smart form activation, a function module will be generated that an ABAP program needs to call. SMART STYLES transaction is helpful in defining the paragraph and character formats(barcodes, fonts, etc).
Advantages of smart forms are:
- It helps to adapt the forms with the help of a graphical user interface and there is no need for programming knowledge.
- During smart form activation, the system will automatically generate the function module.
- For making any changes we need to use the Cut & Paste, Drag & Drop. These actions do not include the writing of coding lines or using a scripting language.
- It is possible to insert the static and dynamic tables using smart forms.
- It permits the user to include graphics, that will be shown as a part of the form or as background graphics. It is possible to suppress the background graphics by the user as and when it is necessary
What is the type group in SAP ABAP?
A type group is an ABAP Dictionary-managed ABAP program that is initiated by the TYPE-POOL statement and that consists of ABAP statements that define globally visible constants, data types, and macros. A type group and its constants, data types, and macros do not have semantic attributes excluding short text and any comments in the source code. The type group name can have only five characters, must begin with a letter, and can have numbers or letters or underscores.
For example, one type group frequently used in the ABAP program is ABAP itself, which consists of multiple low-level constants and types. The disadvantage of this group is loading the entire type group is necessary, even if only a few constants and types are required
