Product Information
New FAQ Guide for Smooth Transition from SE80 to ABAP in Eclipse
Hi ABAP developers,
it’s time for spring and the new ABAP Development Tools (ADT) client version 2.73!
Have you as an SE80 expert ever asked yourself how to compare versions, to use pretty printing, or how to navigate within source code in ADT?
If so, we now have an interesting FAQ guide for you. In this guide, we compare how to perform the most relevant features in SE80 and ADT. This document only contrasts the use of the environments. You can easily skim and navigate through it.
Our goal was to support you for a smooth and quick transition from SE80 to ADT.
Which content is provided?
We have split the content into two chapters:
- Eclipse Basics: Here you will the find the basic information about Eclipse that is relevant for your work.
- FAQs for SE80 Experts Using ADT: Here you will find in accordance to the corresponding development area the how to information for your work.
What does the content look like?
Each FAQ starts with a header containing the relevant keywords. Below, you will find a table, split into how to information for SE80 and ADT. Each column describes the procedure in a text and screenshot. In addition, the ADT column, also provides a link to the relevant content in the official ADT help documentation to get further details.
P.S. This document will be continously supplemented in future. Don’t miss to propose and comment FAQs that need to be added. We will update them for the upcoming ADT client versions. Thank you for your help!
Have fun reading the FAQs and learning more about ADT.
Kind regards,
Wolfgang
A must read for every ABAP Developer !
In case you have topics we should add to the FAQ list feel free to drop a comment here.
Regards,
Thomas.
The linked documentations are very useful (especially the screenshot comparisons), thanks!
Figure 20 in section "How can I find class documentation?" seems to show the method documentation instead of the class docu, is this wanted?
Feature idea: add an option to the ADT preferences to show the signature of a method automatically if the cursor is placed on a method implementation instead of having to press F2 (should include a delay time option aswell).
I fear we could easily forget about this great feature if we forget the keyboard shortcut for it. And we won't use the context menu because it is completely overloaded.
Regards
Daniel
Hi Daniel,
thanks for the feedback and the feature idea. We think in general to enable automatic Elementinfo for all kind of objects in ADT and not only for method implementations.
In the Java Development Tools in Eclipse we have this feature already in place.
Regards,
Thomas.
Thank you, Daniel. I have changed the screenshot. It now displays the documentation triggered from the class name.
Kind regards,
Wolfgang
Hi Wolfgang, The first link works fine, but if I choose “FAQs for SE80 Experts Using ADT: ” , then I get an error. The following link worked instead:
FAQs for SE80 Experts Using ADT
Just for anyone who has the same issue.
Best wishes Julie.
Hi Julie,
thank you for your feedback.
There have been some migrations on the SAP Help Portal in the meantime. Maybe this had some side effects.
I have now updated the link to the latest version. See here
Please note that there will be more updates in the upcoming release (NW7.51 SP02).
Kind regards,
Wolfgang
Hello Wolfgang,
Thank you for this post, it really offers a very good introduction.
I have been working with ADT for a while now, and there is one feature that I miss very much:
Quite often during debugging you have huge tables where you would need to look at some specific parts, which could be easily achieved by filtering - or even calculating totals and subtotals.
To view the contents of ITABs during debugging there is the view "ABAP Internal Table". Though there is a search functionality, and sorting by columns (if supported by the backend) I very much miss some sophisticated filtering possibilities.
In the classic debugger you can switch to ALV view and do all this. Also, if you look at the "Data Preview" view of the AMDP debugger, there are some (basic) filtering options.
I think a powerful tool to analyze tabular data - both for ABAP as well as for AMDP context - would be very much appreciated by the developer community. I also see no reason why these two view should be different (in terms of UI.)
Do you have any hint for me where I could deposit this idea so that it reaches the ADT development team? The ideaplace seems to be discontinued...
Thank you,
Oliver
Hi Oliver,
we plan to improve the ABAP Internal Table view to offer the same features like in the AMDP Debugger Data Preview (multiple filters, column-specific filters, like-operator, etc.), but we can't promise any delivery date. We assume that this will be sufficient for most analysis tasks that are to be expected during ABAP/AMDP debugging.
Currently, we do not plan to provide a sophisticated excel-like analysis tool for ABAP Debugger nor AMDP Debugger. For the use case of very complex analysis we recommend to export the data to your local file system and then use tools that are specialized for complex data analysis. The export functionality provides a simple tab-separated file that can be also be directly opened in Excel.
There is a small chance that we might offer a SQL console within ABAP and/or AMDP Debugger that would allow the user to write custom SELECT statements and execute them against the table-like variable for special analysis.
Regarding the tool differences: I also don't see a reason why the two views should be different in terms of UI and we try our best to keep them similar, but sometimes it is quite hard to mitigate/hide the technical differences between AMDP and ABAP.
Thanks for your feedback. We will keep it in mind for further backlog plannings.
Best regards,
Armin
Hello Armin,
Thanks for the good new!
Oliver
Hi Wolfgang,
I am trying to find out how to create a new program with TOP Include using the ADT. Is this possible? When I create a new program, I do not get this pop-up that is in SE80 and a new blank page is created automatically.
Thanks and regards,
Ondrej
Hi Ondrej,
this option is not available in Eclipse.
Regards,
Thomas.
Hi,
I’m using ADT for some months ago and there is something that i missed from SAP GUI, that is to display all inherit methods for a class.
For example displaying class CL_DD_DOCUMENT:
I can only see methods from CL_DD_DOCUMENT, but not method from superclass CL_DD_AREA, even that class uses CL_DD_AREA as superclass
There is some option to easily display this information?
Hi Jaime,
not in the element info. Typically in Eclipse (also in the Java Development Tools) you use the Quick Outline for that (CTRL + O or CMD + O) while you are editing a source code object. In an opened Quick Outline press again (CTRL + O) to see all methods, incl. the inherited.
Now you can start typing to filter the methods.
I hope this help.
Best regards, Marcus
Hi Marcus,
This is an inconvenience for me.
In that specific case, I'm building class A and I'm using a class B (CL_DD_DOCUMENT) and I want to lookup for some method that I need. If I don't know the class CL_DD_DOCUMENT has methods from inheriting class I would have passed from class and search another.
To know methods that I call I need to open another tab with class and press CTRL + O to open method list, then select one and go to definition to watch parameters, when it would be very useful to display all methods and navigate from F2, not only methods from class and redefined
Hi Jaime,
is in that case the code completion not sufficient for you? In the code completion you will see all methods incl. inherited methods.
Regards,
Thomas.
It should be ok if I already am using the specific class, but if I am looking for a class that returns a specific object, I need to change my code to include all classes that I want to look for.
It is more like a workaround, the interesting solution would be if I can see all accessible methods (directly from the class or from the inherited class) in the specific class.
For example, I need to get a specific object "cl_result", and I found classes cl_calc_result_01, cl_calc_result_02 and cl_calc_result_03 and each one has inherit classes. I need to use each one in my code to view if one method returns the object cl_result
Hi Jaime,
we want to integrate this into the Eclipse Type Hierarchy view. Currently you don't see inherited methods in the view. But this is the goal and in our backlog. It is then similar to the Java Development Tools.
Regards,
Thomas.
Hi Thomas,
Thank you for that, just a doubt.
In this new feature, will the interface of the method be visible?
Hi Wolfgang,
In SAPGUI for ABAP new debugger it's possible to change the step size, which is really useful for example to debug statements like REDUCE.
Is there anything similar in ADT debugger?
Thanks,
Peter
Hi Peter,
no, there is nothing similar in the ADT debugger yet. We get this feature request from time to time, that means it's on the wish list of multiple people and we will consider this fact. Never the less we still have to rank it against other topics, so I cannot promise any delivery date.
Best regards,
Armin
Hi Armin,
Thanks for the info.
Best regards,
Peter