downward compatible ABAP source code

[Michael_Keller]

Dear community, some time ago I transferred ABAP source code from one development system to another development system via copy & paste into a report. When trying to activate the report there were many errors. What happened?

Well, my source system was a SAP NetWeaver 7.50. I had made extensive use of newer possibilities such as inline declarations (already 7 years old!). The target system was a SAP NetWeaver 7.31, if I remember correctly. Accordingly, possibilities such as inline declarations were not available.

In my case, that wasn't too bad 🙂 The source code section was not very long and quickly adapted. In addition, the ABAP Development Tools help a little with Quick Fix to adapt the source code really fast (did I mentioned that before: I like Quick Fix - highly recommended!).

But how does it work if you want to develop generally compatible software for a SAP NetWeaver release? Right off the bat, I couldn't find any statistics which SAP NetWeaver release most customers use. Is that already 7.40 and you can ignore 7.31 and lower even if there is support until 2027? Is that even the year in which support is really discontinued?

In addition, I didn't find a list with which SAP NetWeaver release an ABAP statement or an addition to an ABAP statement was added.

Both information about commonly used SAP NetWeaver release and introduced statements at which release would be really helpful.

To make things a little more complicated: We don't even want to talk about the actual business processes, their application logic and data model. They are also dependent on a certain support package.

Can someone help here with experiences? What could be a good practice?

 

Best regards, thanks for reading and please stay healthy

Michael

 

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