Learning Content to Use With the New ABAP 7.02 Trial

With the recent release of the ABAP 7.02 trial edition, many people might be looking for good learning materials and demos to try out all the new functionality available in this release level.  In this blog I try to collect some of these sources.

Other SCN Content

One of your first stops after installing the ABAP 7.02 trial (or if you are looking for something to read during the installation process), should be the What’s New in ABAP with SAP NetWeaver 7.0 EhP2 page here on SCN. It does a nice job of summarizing the high level feature areas and give you an excellent starting point to perform further research.

There have also been several blogs released in the last week, all focused on the 7.02 ABAP topic and of the things you can try in 7.02 once you have the trial installed.

• ABAP Trial Version 7.02 available in SCN! by Horst Keller
• Web Version of ABAP Keyword Documentation by Horst Keller
• ABAP Feature Set Backport 7.X to 7.02  – Overview by Horst Keller
• Source Code-Based Class Builder by Snezhina Velcheva
• ABAP Debugger Scripting: Basics by Stephen Pfeiffer
• ABAP Debugger Scripting: Advanced by Stephen Pfeiffer
• ABAP Feature Set Backport 7.X to 7.02 – Pragmas by Horst Keller

All of these provide great starting points, particularly for learning new ABAP syntax or workbench capabilities.

Although not directly SCN hosted, it’s probably important to note that the 7.02 version of help.sap.com is now live. I personally find the New Features section of the online help useful when learning the delta features.  For example if you want an overview of the new functionality in Web Dynpro ABAP in 7.02, here is the link you should start with on help.sap.com.

TechEd 2010

TechEd was also a great source of information on the new features in ABAP 7.02.  Don’t forget that many of the sessions were recorded and can be viewed at any time. These sessions can be viewed here: http://www.virtualsapteched.com/

Particularly on the topic of new features you want to learn about in this trial, you might watch the replays of CD105 – What’s New in Web Dynpro ABAP 7.01 and 7.02 and CD203 – Best Practices for Designing Web Dynpro ABAP User Interface.

If you attended TechEd this year, you might have noticed that we didn’t give out the source code to the attendees for many of the usual workshops.  This was mostly because the source code was based upon NetWeaver 7.02 and without a trial edition at that release level yet, it wouldn’t do anyone much good.  Thankfully we now have the 7.02 trial, so we have started uploading some of the code to the SAP Code Exchange.

I have created a Code Exchange project to house transports that can be imported into the 7.02 to deliver some of the demos and exercises we used at TechEd: https://cw.sdn.sap.com/cw/groups/sap-teched-2010-abap-702-examples-and-demo

Currently I have uploaded the content from CD160 – Introduction to Web Dynpro ABAP, CD105 – What’s New in Web Dynpro ABAP 7.01 and 7.02, CD203 – Best Practices for Designing Web Dynpro ABAP User Interfaces, and CD266 – Update Your ABAP Development Skills to NetWeaver 7.0 and Beyond.

If you access the Code Exchange project and go to the Releases tab (after accepting the Terms of Usage), you will see individual download files. Each contains ABAP transport files for the various areas covered.  There is a file for all the CD266 Exercises and the CD160 exercises.  There are also transports for the various demos, such as the performance demos used in CD203 or the Flash Islands and Silverlight Islands demoed in CD105.

If you need any general advice on how to import transports into the trial edition ABAP AS, I would recommend this blog: ABAP Trial Version for Newbies: Part 9 ‘ Importing a transport into SP11/12 ‘.  Its a little bit older now and focused on an early release level, but the overall process of performing transports is sound.

SAP Press Book

If you are interested in the 7.02 features for ABAP development, then (at the risk of some self promotion) I would also recommend the new SAP Press book – Next Generation ABAP Development 2nd Edition which is schedule to start shipping in early January. This new edition of the book was extended and revised specifically to cover the new features in ABAP development in NetWeaver 7.01 and 7.02. For example, the syntax all throughout the book has been updated to include the new statement chaining and extended expressions possible in NetWeaver 7.02.  There are also completely new topics like Business Objects integration, BRF+, Page Builder, Islands, etc.

The book also comes with a CD that contains the source code of all the projects discussed in the book – source code that you can now actually install and run thanks to the recent release of the 7.02 trial edition.

UPDATED: For a limited time you can use discount code 2011NGABAP2E in order to get 10% off the regular price of the book if you order directly from the SAP Press website.