ABAP Platform in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition and SAP S/4HANA 2025

[OlgaDolinskaja]

SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition and SAP S/4HANA 2025 were released to the SAP customer base on October 8, 2025.

ABAP Platform 2025 is the technology platform underlying the release 2025 of SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition and SAP S/4HANA and is shipped as part of these products, supporting only SAP HANA database with full exploitation of its advanced capabilities. In addition,  ABAP Platform 2025 is part of SAP S/4HANA Foundation 2025 for SAP HANA-only Add-Ons.

ABAP Platform 2025 is not shipped as a standalone product. ABAP Platform 2025 consists of the AS ABAP,  the ABAP development tools for Eclipse, and several additional technology components which are required to run SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition and SAP S/4HANA.

Previous versions of SAP S/4HANA Private Edition and SAP S/4HANA such as 1610, 1709, 1809, 1909, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 can be upgraded directly to the 2025 release, which is based on ABAP Platform 2025 (corresponding to SAP_BASIS 816).

Product Highlights

Presentation

This presentation provides the SAP official external slide deck, just click on it to view:

Overview

ABAP Platform 2025 delivers innovations for the ABAP stack in different areas.

Clean core development

In August 2025, SAP enhanced its extensibility guidelines by introducing the new Clean core extensibility white paper. The sustainable and upgrade-safe ABAP extensibility model in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition and SAP S/4HANA fully relies on SAP clean core guiding principles, aiming to decouple custom extensions from SAP standard whenever possible. The refined SAP guidance for extensibility replaces binary clean core decisions with a more nuanced evaluation of classic ABAP extensions based on the clean core level concept. Evolving from the previous 3-tier model, the new extensibility model categorizes extensions into four levels (A, B, C, and D) and provides rules for ABAP classic extensions to meet the clean core level qualifications. Following this new clean core extensibility guidance the ABAP extensibility guide was updated with technical guidelines to support the clean core level concept. The ABAP extensibility model was changed from 3-tier model to ABAP Cloud development (level A) and classic ABAP development (levels B, C and D).

The overall clean core guidance remained unchanged: always striving for the highest possible level of extensibility. ABAP Cloud is the SAP’s recommended development model for all new custom extensions in SAP S/4HANA private cloud and on-premise systems, whereby the classic ABAP extensibility can still be used to reach clean core, with a focus on upgrade-stability and code quality. This enables SAP customers and partners to transition to a clean core incrementally and at their own speed. SAP provides guidance for ABAP clean core development by offering a recommended list of APIs (so-called “classic APIs”) to be used in classic ABAP development. For governance of ABAP clean core development, the ABAP test cockpit (ATC) now supports the clean core level concept with new ATC checks (see the blog post ABAP test cockpit (ATC) recommendations for governance of clean core ABAP development). For governance of ABAP development for clean core in SAP S/4HANA private cloud or on-premise systems the remote ATC in SAP BTP ABAP environment is the SAP recommended approach. 

SAP Joule for Developers,  ABAP AI capabilities

SAP Joule for Developers, ABAP AI capabilities are now key components and an integral part of AI-assisted ABAP Cloud development, also facilitating custom code transformation from ECC to SAP S/4HANA. The capabilities supporting developer tasks include Joule copilot in ABAP development tools for Eclipse, predictive code completion, code explanation and unit test generation for ABAP and ABAP CDS, app and service generation (including RAP BO generation), predictive business logic for RAP BOs, and OData consumption. The provided ABAP AI SDK, powered by Intelligent Scenario Lifecycle Management (ISLM), can be utilized for the implementation of AI capabilities in custom applications.

The custom code migration capabilities include docs chat for questions around custom code migration and S/4HANA simplifications, explanation of business purpose and processing logic of legacy code (ABAP reports), explanation of S/4HANA-related ATC findings in custom code, along with resolution recommendations based on S/4HANA simplification items and cookbooks (see the blog post SAP Joule for Developers Expands to Private Cloud: Accelerating ABAP Innovation and Transformation).

ABAP RESTful Application Programming Model (RAP)

Another major investment area in the 2025 release is the ABAP RESTful Application Programming Model, which powers modern development in both ABAP Cloud and classic ABAP, enabling the creation of delightful transactional SAP Fiori apps as well as local and web APIs. This release delivers new features to accelerate and enhance the development with RAP, including new generators to boost efficiency, support of CDS table entities as persistence layer, various capabilities for SAP Fiori elements-based UIs, such as collaborative draft, cross-BO scenarios, tree views, and event-driven side effects, as well as end-to-end extensibility options.

New ABAP Cloud generators for creating OData UI services with RAP BOs (with one or more entities) from scratch, with or without AI assistance, or for generating custom UI service based on RAP BO interface are provided. ABAP CDS table entities can be used as active persistence layer for managed RAP BOs without draft, replacing classic dictionary database tables.

Enhancements for building of SAP Fiori elements-based apps with RAP include the collaborative draft handling, which allows multiple users to work simultaneously and collaboratively on the same draft instance of an entity without blocking one another. You can now also build SAP Fiori UIs that use multiple RAP BOs interacting with each other. These cross-BO scenarios rely on cross-BO transactional enablement, where the entities of the participating RAP BOs are linked through so-called cross-BO associations. Read-only and editable tree view supports displaying and manipulating hierarchical data in SAP Fiori UIs, with options for drag and drop, cut and paste, reordering, and cascading delete. Event-driven RAP side effects enable asynchronous updates in SAP Fiori UIs. When such a specific RAP business event is raised, the associated side effect is triggered, and the defined targets are reloaded in the UI.

The privileged context can now be propagated in subsequent Entity Manipulation Language (EML) requests in reading and modifying operation. Further enhancement for the behavior definitions and the behavior pools are provided with this release.

ABAP development tools for Eclipse (ADT)

Various enhancements are provided in ABAP development tools for Eclipse for ABAP development, RAP and ABAP CDS related development aspects, testing and troubleshooting, as well as overall IDE and productivity improvements.

Refactoring support for ABAP classes and interfaces was improved by activation of renaming changes by default, validation of new names and displaying long texts of exceptions. The new where-used dialog enables prefiltering of search results to focus on usages relevant for the concrete use case. There is a new property abaplv to filter object searches with the ABAP language version. There are new editors like for example for working with software component relations, Adobe Forms or maintaining intelligent scenarios and intelligent scenarios models which are required to run a solution based on generative AI. It is possible to create and edit CDS table entities and create for them behavior definitions.

In the area of ABAP unit tests, method calls in test classes can now be highlighted in different colors to distinguish their method contexts. Quick actions allow tests to be launched or templates for test classes to be inserted with a single mouse click. The failed assertions and status of test methods can be displayed directly in the source code editor. The unit tests can be rerun with coverage and coverage results can be cleared in the ABAP Coverage view. Additionally, there is a new AMDP Test Double Framework, and the CDS Test Double Framework now supports CDS hierarchy views.

In the ABAP debugger, it is now possible to display the memory consumption of a debugged ABAP program in the new ABAP Memory (Debugger) view. The ABAP Memory Snapshot view lists all memory snapshots, which can be opened in the editor to show memory objects ranked by size. These views make it easier to analyze the memory usage of an ABAP application. Internal tables can now be easily compared using the table comparison tool within the ABAP debugger. Beyond this, the ABAP debugger can now consider variables with hidden values (for sensitive data), display variables of type JSON, and show component groups for nested structures in the Variables view. Collaborative error analysis is supported by export/import of ABAP Cross Trace results to/from JSON file or export of short dumps as ZIP file in the ABAP Runtime Error Viewer.

Beyond this there are also enhancements in transport management for adding an object to a transport or searching and grouping transport requests.

ABAP Language

The modern, declarative, and expression-oriented ABAP language allows writing simple and concise ABAP code through features such as inline declarations and constructor expressions. Advanced operations for internal tables include grouping, filtering, and the CORRESPONDING( ) operator. The cloud-optimized version “ABAP for Cloud Development” is used for ABAP Cloud development.

There are further enhancements for internal tables, including support for arbitrary logical expressions and equality conditions, as well as harmonization of table expressions and READ TABLE statement. New ABAP system classes for probability distributions are provided, enabling the generation of random number and the calculation of quantile, probabilities, and other aspects. These classes support various discrete and continuous distributions. This release also delivers enhancements for expressions and functions, as well as for transformations, such as the new domain XSDGEO for serializing and deserializing spatial data between the Extended Well-Known Binary (EWKB) representation and the GeoJSON format.

SAP HANA-centric optimizations & Data Integration scenarios

Modern ABAP development on SAP HANA has been enhanced with several advanced, database-centric features also enriching data integration scenarios. Recent innovations in data integration focus on data exposure, including ABAP-managed database procedures for advanced read scenarios.  With CDS updatable view entities it is now possible to wrap existing DDIC database tables (or CDS table entities) and expose a native CDS signature, which can be used with ABAP SQL in combination with DCL-based access control. 

On the consumption side, new write scenarios, the use of static CDS external entities, and the possibility to create ABAP CDS models based on imported CDS models make it easier than ever to integrate external data seamlessly into an ABAP CDS view stack.

Additional enhancements, such as CDS table entities to define and manage SAP HANA database tables as native CDS repository objects, a CDS generation wizard to simplify and automate the creation of hierarchically structured data in ABAP CDS, and AI-powered CDS Explain to get semantical context information about CDS entities further brighten the ABAP development landscape.

Embedded analytics

For embedded analytics scenarios it is now possible to expedite development workflow using ABAP Cloud generator wizards for creation of multidimensional analysis apps, Review Booklet apps, or native CDS hierarchy definitions. With the introduction of reusable measures and filters, the key figures, measures, filters and many more features can now be defined centrally, based on user needs to better manage and align analytical reporting. They can also be utilized in CDS view entities to ensure homogenous definition of complex calculations and unification of coherences of the running business.

Event Enablement & Business Events

The event-driven architecture of SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition and SAP S/4HANA is strengthened, and the interoperability across enterprise solutions is improved through seamless integration with SAP Event Mesh Advanced Plan and support of SAP Cloud Application Event Hub to consume events published by SAP Order Management Foundation on SAP BTP.

The event-driven processing and monitoring was enhanced with new outbound event filtering, enabling selective publishing based on configurable criteria, and dynamic topics in SAP Event Mesh Advanced Plan for more efficient routing. Operational transparency was improved through comprehensive event logging, including local capture and logging of successfully processed events. Events of the same type and object within a session can now be grouped as activities, improving traceability and reducing monitoring noise. Together, these features provide a scalable and well-governed foundation for event-driven architecture.

Process integration & Connectivity

Key highlights of process integration include a robust OData service consumption model with Swagger UI preview and advanced OData V4 capabilities, such as bulk processing and asynchronous communication integrated with AIF. The API governance and communication management was enhanced by introducing Communication Targets within Communication Arrangements, enabling more granular control over connectivity endpoints. API lifecycle management is improved through API-to-package assignment and the ability to create API packages for better organization across API types. Additionally, OData-based access to Communication Management data increases automation, transparency, and integration with external tools.

Additional connectivity improvements include outbound communication enablement via HTTP and RFC, support for setting the AIR key as a custom HTTP header in SOAP requests for more secure message handling, direct push-based data exchange between ABAP systems via RFC, and SSE support in the ABAP HTTP client and server for efficient real-time event delivery in distributed scenarios.

Key user extensibility

Further improvements are provided for key user extensibility. It is now possible to generate a Fiori elements application for a custom business object with just one click and maintain behavior extensions for SAP-provided RAP business objects using key user extensibility. Moreover, using developer extensibility it is now possible to implement feature control for custom fields that were created via the Custom Fields app. The new extension field wizard provides a better development efficiency by boosting the creation of custom fields via developer extensibility.

Security

Key updates include support for OAuth Authorization Code with PKCE (RFC 7636) and JWT-based client authentication (RFC 7523), as well as SAP-managed client certificates for secure integration in S/4HANA Private Cloud (2025 FPS01). TLS 1.3 is now supported across HTTP, WebSocket RFC, and SMTP, with OAuth Client Credential Grant enabled for SMTP outbound scenarios such as Exchange Online.

Additional enhancements include new OpenID Connect features, improved troubleshooting guidance (SAP Note 3111813), and a new OAuth Client Configuration UI (SOAUTH_CLIENT) with built-in testing and token metadata display. 

Useful Blog Posts, Community pages and Learnings

ABAP Community Topic Pages:

ABAP Development Community
ABAP Testing and Analysis Community 
ABAP Extensibility Community
ABAP Connectivity Community
SAP BTP ABAP Environment Community
SAP S/4HANA Cloud ABAP Environment Community

ABAP at SAP Events:

ABAP Cloud at SAP TechEd in 2025
ABAP Cloud at Devtoberfest in 2025

Clean Core

Clean core extensibility white paper
ABAP Extensibility Guide – Clean Core for SAP S/4HANA Cloud - August 2025 Update
ABAP test cockpit (ATC) recommendations for governance of clean core ABAP development
ATC on SAP BTP: blog | overview presentation
Certification of Partner Solutions following Clean Core

SAP Joule for Developers, ABAP AI capabilities

SAP Joule for Developers Expands to Private Cloud: Accelerating ABAP Innovation and Transformation
ABAP AI Revolution Accelerates: The ABAP Developer Who Built Enterprise Apps in Minutes
From Legacy to AI-Powered: RISE Transformation Revolution with Joule for developers
ABAP AI - Chapter 2

ABAP Cloud:

ABAP Exensibility Guide
Become SAP Certified Associate – Back-End Developer - ABAP Cloud
ABAP Cloud FAQ
SAP Build and ABAP Cloud Basic Trial Offering
Developer Guide: From Classic ABAP to ABAP Cloud on SAP Help Portal

Further blog posts and topic pages:

State-of-the-Art ABAP Development with ABAP RESTful Application Programming Model (RAP)
ABAP Tools for Clean ABAP

Useful Links

Release Notes for ABAP Platform 2025
Documentation on SAP Help Portal
Product Availability Matrix (PAM)
The ABAP Platform Strategy
ABAP Platform Releases and Consumers
SAP Note 3612209 – ABAP Platform 2025 – General information

Previous landing pages

ABAP Platform for SAP S/4HANA 2023
ABAP Platform for SAP S/4HANA 2022
ABAP Platform for SAP S/4HANA 2021
ABAP Platform for SAP S/4HANA 2020
ABAP Platform for SAP S/4HANA 1909
ABAP Platform for SAP S/4HANA 1809
SAP NetWeaver AS for ABAP 7.52
SAP NetWeaver AS ABAP 7.50