The most recent on-premise support package shipment for AS ABAP 7.4 was just released in September 2014. A lot has happened since the delivery of ABAP 7.4 SP5 in December 2013 and we want to to provide an overview of the major deliveries contained in 7.4 SP8.
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 SP5, Open SQL has been further enhanced.
Just to name a few of the enhancements:
- 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
Advanced View Building with the ABAP Core Data
Services (CDS)
Introduced with 7.4 SP5, 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:
- Complex case distinctions
- Conversion functions for currency and
quantity fields - Views with input parameters
- Modification-free extension of CDS
views
ABAP Managed Database Procedures
Writing clever database procedures can be the key to
boosting performance significantly. Starting with 7.4 SP5, the ABAP Managed
Database Procedures (AMDP) allow developers to create, call and manage the
whole lifecycle of HANA procedures in ABAP.
With the new release, the class-based framework has been enhanced as follows
- Support of tabular changing
parameters in AMDP methods - Modification-free extension of AMDP
methods using BAdIs - Improved exception handling via
handleable exceptions in AMDP methods - Support of secondary DB connections
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.
Further enhancements
The ABAP Development Tools have been further developed
since ABAP 7.4 SP5: e.g.
Support for incremental development
- Diverse Quick fixes and Quick
assistance - 1-Click pull-up of members to
interface and superclasses - Text element support
- New ABAP Test Cockpit UIs
Various enhancements have also been provided in other
areas such as IDA ALV, ABAP Language, ABAP Channels and Performance Tooling
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 will be part of the release.
We are looking forward to the upcoming SAP
TechEd && d-code 2014 in order to roll out all the great stuff.