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karl_kessler
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert

A lot has happened since the delivery of SAP NetWeaver AS ABAP 7.4 Support Package 5 in December 2013. Since September 2014, AS ABAP 7.4 Support Package 8 has been released and is generally available to customers.


This document provides an overview of the major deliveries contained in AS ABAP 7.4 SP08.

Code Pushdown starts with Open SQL

With its ongoing renovation, Open SQL is getting much closer to the SQL-92 standard. After the large feature set delivered together with a new syntax with 7.4 SP05, Open SQL has been further enhanced.

Just to name a few of the enhancements:

  • Inline declaration for the target area of SELECT
  • Search CASE expression
  • Use of SQL expressions as arguments in aggregate functions, behind GROUP BY
    and in the HAVING clause
  • Consumption of parameterized CDS views (currently only on SAP HANA)
  • Strict mode of the syntax check

Check out the documentation  for more information.

Advanced View Building with the ABAP Core Data Services (CDS)

Introduced with 7.4 SP05, ABAP CDS provides a database abstraction layer which simplifies and harmonizes the definition and consumption of semantically rich data models, regardless of the consumers.

The enhancements include the following:

Check out the documentation for more information.

ABAP Managed Database Procedures

Writing clever database procedures can be the key to boosting performance significantly. Starting with 7.4 SP05, the ABAP Managed Database Procedures (AMDP) allow developers to create, call and manage the whole lifecycle of HANA procedures in ABAP.

With SP08, the class-based framework has been enhanced as follows

check out the documention for more information.


ABAP CDS and AMDP provide a so-called “Top-Down”-approach for consuming HANA artifacts, with AS ABAP as sole master during their whole lifecycle. This means that ABAP developers remain in their familiar development environment and proven ABAP concepts and mechanisms can be applied.

ABAP development tools in Eclipse

The ABAP Development Tools (ADT) have been further developed since ABAP 7.4 SP05. ADT 2.31 has been released together with AS ABAP SP08. Some of its new features are:

Enhanced Performance Tooling

Further enhancements

Various improvements and enhancements have also been provided in other areas such as ALV with IDA, ABAP Language and ABAP Channels with the new remote static checks option for old system releases. Last but not least, the Fast Data Access (FDA) protocol for fast data transfer from and to SAP HANA database is part of the release.

ABAP Kernel 742

A new ABAP Kernel (742) was delivered for SP08. The new kernel supports all of the new features above and therefore is mandatory if you apply SP08.

Like its predecessor 741 which is downward compatible to 740 the 742 kernel will be declared as downward compatible moving forward (currently planned for Q2 2015).

NetWeaver 7.4 Support StackMinimal KernelRelease Date
SP05741December 2013
SP06741March 2014
SP07741June 2014
SP08742September 2014
SP09742planned: Q4 2014
SP10742planned: Q1 2015
SP11742planned: Q2 2015

Additional Information

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