ABAP_to_the_Future

Introduction
What I Am Not Going to Talk About
I think it is fairly safe to say that no company in the world relies solely on its SAP system
to get business done. There will always be assorted external systems, some of which are
interfaced to SAP ERP, some not. SAP itself has quite a wide variety of products, stemming
from the time just after the year 2000 when the new dimension products (like SAP
CRM, SAP SCM, and so on) appeared.
Where I work, we have a fair few non-SAP ERP products in use: SAP BW, SAP Business-
Objects BI, SAP PI, and Ariba, to name just a few. I could easily talk about advancements
in those areas as well, but I’m going to concentrate on the bit in the middle of the
Venn diagram: This book will focus on the latest ABAP programming-related features
that you can take advantage of if you have an SAP ERP system. I am not going to talk
about anything for which you need a separately licensed system outside of SAP ERP.
Structure of the Book
The book is split into sections that mirror the great strides SAP has made recently
in the areas of development tools, business logic, user interfaces (UIs), and database
technology. This book will not only explain how to use these new technologies—with
an example application running throughout to keep the focus concrete
rather than abstract—but will also note how these technologies fit in with best
practice programming philosophies. In addition, where appr opriate, the book
highlights custom ways to get around perceived problems in these new tools or
ways to enhance them.
This book is organized into four parts. First, you’ll lo ok at the actual tools you
need when writing programs in the first place. Then, the last three sections mirror
the layers of an application: the business logic layer, the UI/presentation
layer, and the database layer. Each part and its chapters are described in more
detail next.
Part I: Programming Tools
Chapter 1: ABAP in Eclipse
The obvious place to start is the develo pment environment itself, and in recent
times SAP has pushed its customers to start using Eclipse as opposed to SE80.
You’ll explore why this is a good thing and how this t ool enables you to do the
same things you have always done, only faster. In addition, some of the scary new
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