The author has collected the most important recurring solutions for ABAP development in this book. Therefore he could restrict the book to a manageable size. Nevertheless the solutions are explained by using practical examples. Furthermore the book contains many screenshots with detailed explanations that make it easier to understand.
The first part of the compendium explains an example from real life – the examples are showing that he was working at public utilities. It shows how specific development and enhancement of SAP standard can solve the requirements.
The foundation for any development, the SAP Data Dictionary, is explained in great depth. It covers the most important features of the Data Dictionary for developers: table properties, indexes, foreign keys, append structures, expansion categories, conversion routines in domains, table maintenance generator and modification adjustments, lock objects, database utility, search helps.
The next chapter on debugging is the chapter that I like most because for good development you must discover your program errors fast. This chapter explains the new debugger in more detail than the old debugger, because it has a cleaner Look & Feel and has an increased functionality. The author shows the core functionality so that almost all debugging cases during programming are covered. Additionally he gives hints in which cases a debugging instruction should be used. Furthermore some special debug mechanisms are explained, such as debugging pop-up-screens and background programs.
The chapter on professional ABAP development shows how you can use a basic structure for your ABAP programs. He starts with the mostly underrated topic documentation because ABAP programs are not scripts for a short-term event. So if you must maintain an old program it would be nice to have a good documentation inside the program. Also a kind of documentation is the user-friendly error handling that comes next. Here you can see that the author limits himself to the essential error-handling. After some lines about version management he turns to the SAP Control Framework. The book is covering only the ALV Grid Control, but this very extensively. The author is right that this control is the most used among all the controls of this framework but some lines on the Tree Control would have been nice. Nevertheless the author explains the ALV Grid lists for reporting and interactive programming in great detail. Furthermore data transfer and sending mail are explained with simple examples. Some minor topics like the use of “dirty assign” complete the book.
The book is suitable for developers with at least some previous knowledge and also as a reference book for advanced developers. In the moment it is only available in German, but I hope that an English translation will be available soon. If you want to know more Google Play provides the most comprehensive free sample I have seen.
