Thomas Fiedler

January 23, 2014 1 minute read

ABAP Sourcecode Search

Searching within the whole source code repository of the ABAP system was never so easy as it is with the ABAP development tools for Eclipse. With the new version ADT 2.19 which is available since a couple of weeks we offer you a new search console in eclipse. With that feature you can search for arbitrary code snippets and navigate to the related development objects in the editor.

Feature is only available on AS ABAP Systems >= 7.40 SP05. As we are using the HANA Textsearch engine this feature is only working when HANA is your primary database of your ABAP system.

In this video you will see how you can use the new ABAP Sourcecode Search:

Remark about the memory consumption:

Enabling the ABAP Source Search will cause an increased memory consumption in the respective system. The required full text index will consume at least one but regularly several GBs of additional memory, so ensure that the system can provide the needed space!

Before you start you have to enable your backend system for the feature:

In order to enable the ABAP Source Search, you need to switch on the business function SRIS_SOURCE_SEARCH. To be able to do that, you need activation authorizations in the Switch Framework (authorization object S_SWITCH, activity 07). Open transaction SFW5, expand the ENTERPRISE_BUSINESS_FUNCTIONS node and look for the SRIS_SOURCE_SEARCH business function. Switch on the checkbox in the column ‘Planned Status’ and press the button “Activate Changes”. The activation process will take place in a background job. Please check transaction SM37 for the progress.

Remark:
The index activation may be finished within seconds, but please be aware, that the indexing takes place asynchronously and may take up to several hours. You can also use report SRIS_CODE_SEARCH_PREPARATION in order to check the status. It also checks another index on the TADIR table which is under normal circumstances updated regularly with the where-used index. If this TADIR index is incomplete, you can schedule an index rebuild also with this report.

Have Fun with the new feature !

Kind Regards,

Thomas.

28 Comments

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Former Member

January 23, 2014 at 2:23 pm

Wow, that's really interesting, I tried it as you said and I functions very well. Thank you ...

Former Member

January 24, 2014 at 6:58 am

Hi Thomas,

a really cool feature. Is it possible to restrict the search to a package,...?

Regards,

Christian

Thomas Fiedler

Blog Post Author

January 24, 2014 at 7:28 am

Hi Christian,

not yet. But with the next version you can restrict the search to packages, object types (e.g. only classes) and to compilation units (e.g. searching only in a specific report or function group). It is like in google when you restrict the search for a specific web site via the addition "site:www.sap.com".

Regards,

Thomas.

Guilherme Dellagustin

February 5, 2014 at 11:07 am

Hi Thomas,

This additions will be very useful, I'll try to test the tool here.

Best Regards,

Guilherme.

Guilherme Dellagustin

February 8, 2014 at 3:02 pm

Hi Thomas,

Is the activation of the switch SRIS_CODE_SEARCH_PREPARATION client dependent?

I asked my IT contacts to activate it and they asked me in which client to do it.

Best Regards.

Sebastian Wolf

February 10, 2014 at 8:13 am

Hi Guilherme,

the business function is not client dependent. So it doesn't make a difference in which client the activation is performed. It will become active in all clients afterwards.

Best regards, Sebastian

Daniel Ruiz

July 22, 2014 at 3:30 am

Hi,

depending on the package size, you can just add it as favorite and use load full package content (will download to eclipse virtualfs) and you can use the normal eclipse search functions on your workspace.

Thomas Fiedler

Blog Post Author

July 22, 2014 at 6:16 am

Hi Daniel,

this only works when the development object have been loaded in the editor already.

Only then the source is cached on the local client and the local search works.

But for me it is not a recommended workaround.

Regards,

Thomas.

Daniel Ruiz

July 22, 2014 at 9:21 pm

Hi Thomas,

This is no workaround, this is how the search is supposed to work in Eclipse - It is no different than checking out Java Projects into the workspace and searching then.

Also, this was a response to someone asking how to search in a given package - I find this very suitable, and the problems could be around BIG packages; - which in fact resumes to bad design from SAP, but this is a different topic.

Peter Inotai

February 17, 2014 at 9:36 am

Hi Thomas,

What is the SP level requirements for the ABAP backend?

Just checked in our ERP 607 system with ABAP 7.40 SP004, but couldn't find SRIS_SOURCE_SEARCH.

Is it only available with SP005?

Thanks,

Peter

Thomas Fiedler

Blog Post Author

February 17, 2014 at 9:53 am

Hi Peter,

you need at least 7.40 SP05.

I have added this information now to the blog.

Regards,

Thomas.

Peter Inotai

February 17, 2014 at 9:58 am

Hi Thomas,

Thanks for the quick reply.

This explains why it's not available in our SP004 system.

Cheers,

Peter

Freek Cavens

May 15, 2014 at 8:05 pm

It would have been nice if you had mentioned that the feature is only available for systems running on HANA. I activated the switch, ran SRIS_CODE_SEARCH_PREPARATION and got :

'Hey there! Get a HANA, get the search!'

I then read the switch release information and there I found that this only works on HANA.

We recently upgraded to 7.40 SP05, so I thought this would be a very nice feature. Guess not.

Regards,

Freek

Christian Drumm

June 17, 2014 at 10:30 am

Hi Thomas,

you you should really update the blog with the information that the feature is only available on HANA. I also activated the function before noticing its HANA-only.

So I'll have to continue using the good old RS_ABAP_SOURCE_SCAN

Christian

Markus Karsch

February 26, 2015 at 4:57 pm

Hi all,

this is to inform you that after activation of this business function in our ERP EHP7 the HANA (latest patchlevel 92) database grew over 90GB. For example REPOSRC disk usage increased from 5,5GB to over 44GB and indexing was still running for new fulltext index SRC. I'm not sure if it's a bug somewhere because we deactivated business function after we noticed the growth.

Regards

Markus

Sebastian Wolf

February 27, 2015 at 8:57 am

Hi Markus,

unfortunately, this is not a bug as the required HANA full text index for such a big REPOSRC table just requires that amount of memory.

We are currently evaluating on how we can address that. Sorry for the inconvenience!

Best regards, Sebastian

Markus Karsch

February 27, 2015 at 9:57 am

Hi Sebastian,

thanks for your reply. Unfortunately I only read about 10GB in documentation of business function and for example note 1918229. Maybe it should be mentioned that this index for a normal ECC EHP7 takes a lot more diskspace in HANA.

Regards

Markus

Marcin Ozdzinski

March 19, 2015 at 2:48 pm

Hi Sebastian

We encountered exactly same problem with extra space consumption.

Is it possible to turn off this function and release to previous memory consumption level ?

Is it enough to switch off SFW5 ? Should we also delete some indexes in HANA ?

Best regards

Marcin

Sebastian Wolf

March 19, 2015 at 2:53 pm

Hi Marcin,

yes it's absolutely sufficient to switch off the business function via SFW5 again. The system will remove all HANA indexes automatically and you should have the same memory consumption as before.

Best regards, Sebastian

Markus Karsch

March 19, 2015 at 3:39 pm

Hi Marcin,

it is enough to reverse the switch in SFW5 and objects in HANA will be deleted, but diskspace is still allocated (and will be reused). To free diskspace you unfortunately need to do a restore.

Regards

Markus

Marcus Müller

September 15, 2017 at 2:22 pm

Hello Thomas,

we also noticed a relative high memory consumption after activating this very nice BF. We need the search function only in our development systems, not in Q or P systems. Within SFW5 it is not possible to keep this function from being transported to Q and P Systems. (It will be transported next time another BF will be transported!).

Is it possible to switch off indexing in Q and P systems while BF is active, but keeping it active in D systems?

Regards

Marcus

Timo John

August 13, 2020 at 12:16 pm

Hallo Marcus,
same Issue in Hamburg.
Just again for the third time we ran into this. No really nice solution in my current view….

First deactivate the SRIS_SOURCE_SEARCH in dev. release TA and activate again …

Check Transports? might be an option.

But for now …. ?

EDIT:
in Productive System Report: SFW_OP_MODE_REVERSIBLE_BF helps to deactivate the BF again.

Mike Pokraka

August 23, 2018 at 11:17 am

I’ve had several attempts at using this feature and always found it a bit unreliable. Finally got time to properly play with it, and there are definitely some reproducible ‘features’.

Here’s one example I narrowed down: Create global class ZCL_FOO:

CLASS zcl_foo DEFINITION PUBLIC.
  PUBLIC SECTION.
    DATA blah1234 TYPE i.
ENDCLASS.

CLASS zcl_foo IMPLEMENTATION.
ENDCLASS.

Now create a program that uses the attribute:

REPORT zfoo.
data(o) = new zcl_foo( ).
data(blah) = o->blah1234.

So the text search should throw up two instances of blah1234, right?

Wrong:

The old, slow but trusty alternative provides the correct result:

Edo von Glan

November 14, 2019 at 2:37 pm

Hi Mike,

do you still encounter this "feature"? Did you open a ticket?

We are just switching to HANA, so I am curious whether it is worth it.

(Performance of RS_ABAP_SOURCE_SCAN seems to be roughly the same as pre-HANA.)

By the way, if you decide not to switch on the HANA search, check out my enhancements to RS_ABAP_SOURCE_SCAN: https://blogs.sap.com/2018/09/19/code-search-in-modifications-and-enhancements/ .

Cheers,

Edo

Mike Pokraka

November 14, 2019 at 3:56 pm

Hi Edo,

No, I didn't open a ticket, posted here because individuals can't raise tickets and can't always commit to following one at a customer site for potentially several months (and a small dose of #tooLazyToRaiseOSS thrown in for good measure).

The HANA systems I have access to at the moment don't have text search enabled, so I can't tell if the bug still exists. 🙁

But I would still say that switching it on is definitely worth it, it's really quick. Set it up, try the procedure above and if it's still not right then just be aware that you can't rely on negatives. Maybe you're in a better position than I am to raise a ticket.

Cheers,
Mike

Edo von Glan

November 14, 2019 at 4:09 pm

yes, we will try it out. I am sure SAP is looking forward to my feedback 😉

Leonardo Pavía

November 4, 2020 at 1:31 am

Hi Thomas, is there any recommended maintenance task which should be done after this business function is activated? I just activated it, index building is done according to report SRIS_CODE_SEARCH_PREPARATION, but now all reading and writing operations to REPOSRC,TRDIR tables seem to be dramatically slowed down.

Appreciate your help.

Jayanta Choudhuri

July 7, 2022 at 11:49 am

Hi Thomas

I tried this on a 16GB RAM docker ABAP 1909 and SAP crashed!

Kindly put minimum memory requirements for this 128GB 512 GB RAM whatever and also CPU power needed for indexing.

Trial SAP is a smaller REPOSRC but standard S4/HANA with all the SAP code
will take a huge time to index without resources.

Regards
Jayanta

ABAP Sourcecode Search

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