New ADT feature - Creating ABAP CDS objects with reference to tables or other CDS views

[Andre_Fischer]

Updates:

• added prerequisites section

 

 

Prerequisites

• ADT 3.12 or later


• SAP S/4 HANA 1909 or later


• SAP Cloud Platform ABAP Environment

Feature overview

 

With the latest ADT version (3.12) a feature became available that I have been waiting for a long time.

Though it has been listed in "What's new in SAP Cloud Platform" it could happen that this useful feature would not get the attention it deserves.

" ...When creating, for example, a data definition, you can now refer to an existing CDS object or database table. This enables you to insert all elements of a referenced object in your new CDS object to be created."

But its actually not a feature that is only available for SAP Cloud Platform.

It is also available for SAP S/4HANA 1909 and higher.

It does unfortunately not work with older releases (I tested 740, 750 and 751).

So when you now right-click on a table and select "New Data Defintion" from the context menu.

 

In the next window the New Data Definition dialog opens that now offers the new input field Referenced Object.

Since I started the wizard from the context menu of a table the field is prefilled with the table name /DMO/TRAVEL.

In the following you can select the template that you want to use. I am using here the new view entity type that does not require to create a DDIC structure alongside with the CDS view.

and volià, (surprise, surprise) the DDL source code editor opens with all fields of the table filled in the define section.

---- LAB-PREVIEW ----

With an upcoming version of the ADT tools this wizard will be enhanced such, that it will also add aliases for the abap field names of a table.

The result  will then look like this.

define view entity ztravel as select from /DMO/TRAVEL {

    key travel_id as TravelId,

    agency_id as AgencyId,

    customer_id as CustomerId,

    ...

---- LAB-PREVIEW ----