ABAP in Eclipse – Single development tool for Java, ABAP and many more

This blog is for mission ‘Eclipse Feature Explorer‘

About me:

I am a SAP Process Integration / Process Orchestration consultant. I work on Java coding more than ABAP coding. FYI, SAP PO is moving towards Java single stack. Nevertheless, I am involved in a lot of ABAP coding when middle-ware (SAP PO) interact with SAP ECC. Like ABAP proxies, IDocs, RFCs.

Experience with Eclipse:

Coming from Java programming background. I have worked on very good Integrated Development Environments. Like Eclipse, NetBeans and IntelliJ. I am using SAP NetWeaver Developer Studio, which is built on Eclipse platform, similar to SAP ABAP Development Tools (ADT).

My opinion about ADT for Eclipse:

Until ADT, I thought ABAP was seriously lagging behind. In providing IDE experience, when compared to other languages, like Java. Now, I can use single tool to edit SAP PO Java code and SAP ECC ABAP code. Less number of things to remember from tool respective. Familiar coding and debugging UI experience. Features I like in ADT are, Ctrl + 1, Ctrl + Space and Shift + Enter (these are in my muscle memory). Pop-up help. ABAP Source code search. Simple joy of Copy, Cut and Paste (Ctrl commands). Intuitive UI. Can connect to multiple systems from single Eclipse instance, means less clutter on task bar. I would certainly recommend ABAP newbies to use Eclipse ADT over SE80.

What I would like to see in future?

Maybe a highly zoomed out code view (like Document Map in NotePad++). More ABAP books teaching how to use Eclipse for coding and maybe in last chapter teach about SE80 (currently, most of the books are other way around).

I would like to invite my colleagues to explorer about ADT. Karanam Trivikram Ram Manohar Reddy Bandaru and SAP PI / PO Consultants.

I would say SAP using Eclipse platform for Java, ABAP, UI5, HANA, Process Orchestration and many more is “The Way To Go!”.