ABAP_to_the_Future

15
ABAP Programming for SAP HANA
Naughty Reads on Underlying Tables (15/10/4)
As you’ll recall from a few paragraphs ago, cluster and pool tables are not actually
real database tables, even if they look the same as normal tables from SE11 and
SE16. In fact, traditionally these have b een stored in the database by real, transparent
tables; for example, the BSEG data actually lives in cluster RFBLG, so it’s
possible in ABAP code to do a direct SQL read on RFBLG as opposed to BSEG.
Neither one is a real table, like VBAK—but after conversion to SAP HANA, BSEG
is a real table and RFBLG is empty.
The Code Inspector check for database reads on such false tables is shown in Figure
15.14.
Figure 15.14 Check for Direct Reads on Underlying Tables
The check shown in Figure 15.14 has been created to spot such SQL statements
that will work fine up until a migration to SAP HANA and then not at all afterwards.
15.6 Summary
As you might imagine, in this day and age it would be virtually impossible to
write an SAP-related book (especially a highly technical one) without mentioning
the (relatively) new, all- singing, all-dancing, in-m emory database SAP HANA.
This chapter showed you how ABAP prog ramming is changing because of SAP
HANA. You can also expect fast developments in this area; ABAP version 7.4 was
the first to be specifically enabled for SAP HANA, and it entered general availability
in May 2013. With SP 2, bottom-up development was enabled, and in February
2014, with SP 5, top-down development came to town. SP 9 was released at
the end of November 2014, many anno uncements about the new features were
made at SAP TechEd (or what was briefly named “d-code” in a sort of “New Coke”
moment), and already SAP is hinting about what’s going to come as far ahead as
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