Obsolete statements

[Krzysztof]

Hi All.

There is a lot of obsolete statements in ABAP.
How can I find information about ABAP release in which the statement has become obsolete?

Regards,
Krzysztof

[matt]

Read the release notes in the ABAP documentation? Start with your current version - work backwards.

[retired_member]

Since recently, I offer a search in subnodes of the documentation tree in the SAP GUI version. Right click the news node, enter search term, select full text search. Leads most probably to the respective news.

https://help.sap.com/http.svc/rc/abapdocu_752_index_htm/7.52/en-US/index.htm?file=abennews-752-other...

[pokrakam]

You can always look at the release-specific changes in the ABAP documentation, but there is no reverse lookup as such.

The vast majority of obsoleting happened with 7.0. May I ask why you want this info? Obsolete means it still works but should no longer be used. There is no case for using it in any version if the newer alternative is available.

[Krzysztof]

Since many customers have different releases, this is a frequent question during ABAP trainings. Not every obsolete statement have clear defined successor or successor at all.

[matt]

I can't think of any which don't have a successor. What do you have in mind?

[pokrakam]

The alternative is always explained in the docs. Like Matthew I can't think of anything obsolete that I have no alternative for.

[Krzysztof]

e.g. OCCURS addition in internal table with header line declaration, successor - WITH HEADER LINE (obsolete), successor? - nothing (use of separate structure as work area).

[pokrakam]

To me this reads like a "clear defined successor":

• A work area for replacing a header line can be declared very simply by using the addition LINE OF of the statements TYPES, DATA, and so on.

And the reason is also explained in detail:

https://help.sap.com/http.svc/rc/abapdocu_752_index_htm/7.52/en-US/index.htm?file=abenitab_header_li...

[Krzysztof]

I know all about this, but my question still is: in which release OCCURS or WITH HEADER LINE has become obsolete?

[retired_member]

See modification 6.

https://help.sap.com/http.svc/rc/abapdocu_752_index_htm/7.52/en-US/index.htm?file=abennews-30-declar...

The addition WITH HEADER LINE was introduced also with 3.0. Well, introducing that was kind of counterproductive in my opinion. Later, I quarreled about that with the ABAP boss of this time, but they wanted to have it in order to get rid of OCCURS without forcing the programmers to change to much at once. Reasonable, if you imagine that before 3.0 there were no internal tables without header lines.

The real deprecation came with ABAP Objects, in 4.5, 4.6. Newly written code in classes could be checked stricter.

[matt]

WITH HEADER LINE is an abonimation before the Lord (of unambiguituy). The issue was that the header line and the table had the same name. This is bad. If you weren't there man, (when header lines were actually taught as preferable), you don't know the horror.

Anyway - who uses workareas nowadays? I reccomend obsoleting INTO. ASSIGN is the only way. 😉

[retired_member]

Under most of the obsolete features it is documented why it is obsolete and what you should use instead.

Yeah, for the latter, you have awkwardly to check the release notes, when it was introduced, sorry.

In fact, I started a table, where for all language elements, the release is noted and I want to publish that somehow. But it is not my most important task.

[matt]

The changes by release section

https://help.sap.com/doc/abapdocu_751_index_htm/7.51/en-US/abennews.htm

seems to be missing releases between 3.0 and 4.0 (non-inclusive).

[retired_member]

?

[matt]

I can see changes up to 3.0 and from 4.0, but no release changes in between. Were there really no changes between these releases? INNER JOIN was 3.1I, wasn't it?

[Krzysztof]

I like your table already 🙂

[retired_member]

According to documentation, inner join was 4.0.

Regarding ABAP, there were no releases 3.xx after 3.0.

Maybe R/3 3.xx were shipped with ABAP 4.0. Don't know. I took over the maintenance of the release notes much later, around 7.xx.

[matt]

"Maybe R/3 3.xx were shipped with ABAP 4.0." Seems likely. You could upgrade from 31H to 46C, but 31I was more complicated. So my guess is that 31H was running on the same ABAP release as 4.0 or thereabouts.

[tom_wan]

BTW, SLIN(Extended Syntax Check) or SCI(Code inspector) has a check called "Obsolete Statements". You can use them to examine your Z/Y programs.