Starting with ABAP programming

[former_member607295]

Hi.

So, there's a lot of people who always ask me "where should I start learning ABAP? How did you learn to program in abap" and my answer is always "I don't know... I kinda just stumbled down into this rabbit hole. People taught me small things and here we are".

And well... this is for all of you, I made a compilation of several blogs and videos that can help when starting to learning ABAP.

 

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First of all, what is ABAP. Ignore this if you don't care about the formal definition, it's not necessary at all in my opinion.

https://searchsap.techtarget.com/definition/ABAP

And a brief video on the basic structure of the system:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEyXS5hzKt4

Youtuber: HandsonERP

 

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Second, how to create an extremely basic ABAP program:

https://www.wikihow.com/Create-an-ABAP-Program

This WikiHow explains it pretty well, my only advice would be to try to not get too attatched to the command WRITE ot the NEW-LINE, most likely you won't be using them very often in your career (if at all)

And here's a set of videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXrX3Oz9ys0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRdqew6Nv88&t=16s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuLfL9pIrno

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0X7pOISgr0I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E62LD1ORvKE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vwjP7QX_NU

Youtuber: Pete Moxon

I find it more productive to learn from a video made from a real person than just from a manual, but if you really need it, I recomend www.saptechnical.com or blogs.sap.com (or just google) if you have particular doubts. Full written manuals tend to have too much unnecessary information.

Here's what data base objects are:

https://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=462057079

Also there's a list of ABAP commands here:

https://www.erpworkbench.com/abap/statements/commandhome.htm

 

 

In most cases, the important thing to know how the program should behave, rather than the code itself, so... pseudocode:

What it is and how to eat it: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/how-to-write-a-pseudo-code/

Simpler: https://m.wikihow.com/Write-Pseudocode

And examples on how you should do it: https://www.unf.edu/~broggio/cop2221/2221pseu.htm

But this is like the pirate's code, is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules. Welcome aboard the Black Pearl, Miss Turner!

 

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Third, what most of you want, debugging:

Debugging is the best thing you can learn, because it gives you the ability to read the functioning of any program (given you know the ABAP basics)

Here's an article on debugging step by step:

http://www.apprisia.com/blog/sap-abap/your-complete-guide-to-using-debugger-in-abap-step-by-step-wit...

And several links of how to debug different ABAP Objects:

Report/Function Module:

http://saptechnical.com/Tutorials/ABAP/SystemDebugging/Page1.htm

Popup:

http://saptechnical.com/Tutorials/ABAP/Debug/Popup.htm

In background task:

http://saptechnical.com/Tutorials/ABAP/Debug/Page2.htm

SmartForms:

http://www.saptechnical.com/Tips/SmartForms/Debug/Index.htm

 

And again Pete Moxon's greatly explained videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y4VjjAA4NA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQMvK7loUXA

Here's how to use watchpoints (the thing to keep an eye on a particular variable):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95UbhvyCLr0

 

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Interesting Links:

Book: First steps in ABAP

Books and stuff: https://www.sap-press.com/programming/abap-basics/

Pete Moxon's playlist on ABAP Programming

 

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If I find something else interesting relevant to this post, I'll try to keep it updated.

 

See you 😉