Book Review: ABAP Objects ABAP Programming in SAP NW ( SAP Press)

[kavindra_joshi]

When I joined SAP Labs India in 2007 , this book was gifted to me ( as well as every ABAP developer) in the team by the manager. Initially we thought what we would do with the book ( use it as weight for exercising was also an option given the volume of the book). So it found a corner space in the book shelf and rested their comfortably. But as I moved into typical developments,  I realized the importance of the book. The book is pretty expansive in content and would touch upon mostly everything if not in detailed. The emphasis of the book as the name suggests is on ABAP Objects and the authors have done a wonderful work in that regards. Before I go into details of the book please understand This is not a book its a bible. You have to read it every day to soak in the learning.

The book has following thirteen topics

• Introduction
• A practical introduction to ABAP
• Basic Principles to ABAP
• Classes and Objects
• Basic ABAP Language Elements
• Advanced Concepts in ABAP Objects
• Classic ABAP- Events and Procedures
• Error Handling
• GUI Programming with ABAP
• Working with Persistent Data
• Dynamic Programming
• External Interfaces
• Testing and Analysis Tools

So if you see the content, you would agree with my previous statement that the content is expansive. If you are new to ABAP objects this book is a treatise on everything on ABAP objects and explains every concept in detail with examples. I have gone back and read this stuff so many times that some of the examples are always in my mind. Since I was into developing frameworks there were some topics such as Events in ABAP , Dynamic Programming  ( Field Symbols and Dynamic Method calls) , Testing and Analysis Tools , Shared Memory and XML were very beneficial to me. This book also has a very robust section on Error Handling which is often ignored by consultants. It is imperative that exceptions are caught in the UI and they should be raised in the frameworks and the context information be provided in exception objects.

Most of the us have learned ABAP through on job learning and in that case we know the practical usage but the theoretical knowledge of concepts is lagging. This book exposes us to those smaller things. Also sometimes in the project when we have to deal with topics such as RFCs and External Interfaces of which we have no clue. A formal knowledge on the subject would not prepare to do things on previous mentioned topics but give us a logical edge to think in the right direction.

If you are into any sort of ABAP development especially ABAP Objects , this book is a must have.

In the end I would summarize - this book has been my companion for more than 7 years and now when I flip the pages to read a topic which I don't use in my daily life , I am still amazed at the depth of knowledge of authors Horst Keller & Sascha Krüger and that spurs me to raise my standards.