ABAP Development Tools 2.0: What's new?

[Former Member]

Since a few days release 2.0 of the ABAP Development Tools for SAP NetWeaver is generally available. The good news is, that a new release of the ABAP Development Tools doesn't require a new AS ABAP backend release but is backward-compatible. So still the minimum requirement for using ADT is a SAP NetWeaver AS ABAP 7.03/7.31 system with SAP Basis 7.31 and support package stack 4*. ADT 2.0 offers several enhancements - some of them are available out-of-the-box, some of them rely on a new AS ABAP release because of the required backend services. In this blog I'll focus on the enhancements of ADT 2.0 which are available for developers on SAP NetWeaver AS ABAP 7.03/7.31 (see above).

Where can I download the ABAP Development Tools 2.0?
It's available for download in the SAP Software Download Center (S-user required): http://service.sap.com/swdc
Click on Search for Software Downloads and enter ABAP Eclipse 2.0 as search term. Download the software package and follow the instructions of the corresponding installation guide. We are also working on an ADT 2.0 trial edition, but unfortunately it's not available yet.

Which new features are provided by the ABAP Development Tools 2.0?

• ADT 2.0 now supports three operating systems:
  - Microsoft Windows XP, Vista, 7
  - Mac OS X
  - Linux: For detailed information about the supported Linux distributions please consult this SCN page.
• ADT 2.0 supports not only the Indigo (3.7.x) release but also the Juno (4.2.x) release of Eclipse.
• You can now edit the source code formatting options (pretty printer) directly within Eclipse:
  Preferences > ABAP Development > Source Code Editor > Formatter
• You can now copy interfaces and classes using the context menu in the project explorer.
• You can now open local ABAP development objects of other users in the project explorer (e.g. use Ctrl+Shift+A).
• You can now create function groups, function group includes, function modules and includes in the project explorer:
  
• If your quality manager uses the ABAP Test Cockpit (ATC) to run central quality checks in the development system you can now directly start these checks for specific development objects using the context menu of the project explorer:
  
  The results of these quality checks will be displayed in the problems view and you can double-click on a specific finding to navigate to the affected source code:
  
  Moreover, you can also add the ATC findings for a specific system to your Feed Reader:
  
  For more information about the ABAP Test Cockpit you may read this short introduction on SCN.

For detailed information about the above mentioned features please consult the ABAP Development User Guide which is directly available within the Eclipse Help menu -> Help Contents.

Ok, and that's all?
No, these are only the new features available for developers on a SAP NetWeaver AS ABAP 7.x system. The ABAP Development Tools 2.0 also provide several enhancements for the planned SAP NetWeaver AS ABAP 7.4 release and its SAP HANA optimizations. My colleagues will soon publish several blogs in the ABAP for SAP HANA community on SCN to illustrate the planned HANA-specific optimizations of AS ABAP 7.4. So stay tuned...

*SAP Kernel 7.21 is required for debugging support.