Technical Articles
ABAP Search and Analysis Tools Plugin
Have you ever been in the situtation where you wanted to find a CDS View with criteria like
- a specific field (or fields)
- certain annotations (annotation values)
- maybe a certain description
- and many more?
Search no more. With this nifty plugin called ABAP Search and Analysis Tools you now have a powerful search tool at hand.
The search is integrated in the eclipse Search Dialog which you can call with the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+H.
The ABAP Object Search + Dialog
The search currently supports two data types: CDS View and Database Table/View. You can search for multiple object names at a time and even exclude objects from the search result by prefixing your search term with !. Furthermore you can restrict the number of results up to 2000 rows :). Let’s move on to the result page.
The Search Result Page
After the search is finished the results will be displayed in the eclipse Search View. You can group the result by Package if you want. You also have the option to store the executed query as Favorite.
For CDS Views with the special annotation @Analytics.query: true you also have the option to open them either
- in RSRT as ABAP BICS or
- in Analysis for Excel (Of course the Analysis for Office Add-On has to be installed on your PC)
Prerequisites for the plugin
To install and use the plugin you have first have to do the following 2 steps:
- Install ABAP Development Tools Plugin https://tools.hana.ondemand.com/#abap
- Make sure the following abapGit Repository https://github.com/stockbal/abap-search-tools is installed.
Note: Please read the README file in the repository before installing it onto your ABAP system
References
You can download the plugin from the eclipse marketplace https://marketplace.eclipse.org/content/abap-search-and-analysis-tools.
For more information about the included features please visit the GitHub repository https://github.com/stockbal/abap-search-tools-ui/wiki
I hope you find it useful
Ludwig
Hi Ludwig,
I think there is another prerequisite on the backend in order to make this work. I am receiving the following error when trying to test this plugin:
Any idea what is missing in my system? It is a 740 system. I receive the same error with a 7.54 system as well.
Thanks,
Jeff.
Hi Jeff,
if you installed the correct branch for your system from https://github.com/stockbal/abap-search-tools, then I can only think of two possible culprits:
-> Restarting eclipse should fix that
-> If another activation is not successful I would suggest that you delete the BAdI Implementation and pull it again from the ABAPGit Repository. Another eclipse restart should than be enough
Regards
Ludwig
I've made sure everything is active and I am still stumped. I'm wondering if it is related to the HANA textsearch engine? I know for the source code search in eclipse you need to activate the SRIS_SOURCE_SEARCH business function as show in this blog. Do you know if this utilizes something similar?
Thanks,
Jeff
Hi Jeff,
My plugin is in no way connected to the HANA textsearch engine. So no business function needs to be activated for it to work. The import of my abapGit repository is the only requirement.
Can you please try the following steps for further analysis:
Regards
Ludwig
Boy do I feel dumb now. All this time I forgot to check SU53! It was a simple authorization issue with /devepos/adt/saat/discovery. I also forgot about how helpful the communication log is in eclipse as I forgot it was even there.
The plugin looks great! Thanks for all your help.
Thanks,
Jeff
This is a really nice plugin. I had the chance to use it for some months already and it turned out to be a great help in my everyday work as a S/4 developer. The most valuable search filters for me are “anno”, “assoc” and “field”
Thanks for sharing this tool with the community.
Great work Ludwig!
I am sure, this tool will find his way in a lot of ADTs out there in the modern world of development with ABAP CDS in Eclipse.
Regards,
Sebastian
It’s good plugin.Surely,I will try this feature.
Thank you,
Syam
A pretty nice plugin, Ludwig. Thanks a lot!
A nice addition would be a search for data elements and/or domains. Sometimes you have to change the data type of it and this could help analysing the implications of it 🙂
Regards
Frank
Hi Frank,
I am glad you like it.
I am not sure if I understand your request correctly though. Do you want to have a dedicated Data Element / Domain type search alongside the existing search types CDS View and Database Table/View?
In a dedicated Data Element search I would include a search filter doma which would allow to search for all data elements with the given domain(s). That way you would see the affected data lements if you change the given domain.
Regards
Ludwig
Hi Ludwig,
this is indeed a great and powerful Plugin for the ABAP Development Tools!
Today I tried it for the first time - and all I can say is: Awesome!
Thanks/Danke,
Johann