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20 Uses for ABAP on BW Projects

by Ned Falk, Senior Education Consultant, SAP America

BW reduces the need for ABAP for most reporting tasks, but most BW projects could benefit from having an experienced ABAPer available. This is particularly true for data preparation and preprocessing functions. The author shows how an ABAP programmer would be useful in 20 different areas.

If you ask a CIO why his or her company implemented BW, the answer might include a desire to do away with custom ABAP reports. It's true that BW can eliminate the need to create ABAP reports. In addition, BW's new Transformation Library, which writes ABAP code for you, further reduces dependency on ABAP, as do alternatives such as XML/SOAP, Java, and external ETL tools. But does BW totally eliminate the need for ABAP coding?

No. So, don't send the ABAP programmers home so quickly!

ABAP programmers who are familiar with BW will be assets to most projects. However, their focus, with a few exceptions, will move from report creation to data preparation and preprocessing functions. Figure 1 (below) shows areas within the standard BW architecture where you might use ABAP:

  • Six places during extraction, including creating custom DataSources, enhancing DataSources, and data selection in InfoPackages
  • Six places during staging, including currency/units of measure conversions, transfer routines, and update rules
  • Four places during reporting, including generating system-entered variables and the report/report interface

You also have four other opportunities in BW to use ABAP: Open Hub Service transformations, building authorization values, process chains, and virtual InfoCubes with services.

Figure 1 20 ways to enhance your BW system with ABAP

That's a total of 20 ways you can use ABAP to enhance the operation and utility of your BW system. This article introduces you to each of them.

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