Introduction

There is something that’s been bugging me a lot about the hottest thing happening in ABAP right now – the RESTful Application Programming Model, ABAP RAP for short. Why do we need to modify the language itself to achieve such functionality?

I can look past the CDS – we can think of them as sort of metadata files that define the structure of our service. That’s okay. But what is the point of something like an Entity Manipulation Language? Here’s an example of what I mean (image from Yogesh Vijay’s blog post):

MODIFY ENTITIES – CREATE

Why would you want in any way for statements like “MODIFY ENTITIES”, “MAPPED”, “REPORTED”, etc. to be a part of the core language? The core language should, in my opinion, be kept as simple as possible. And any additional functionalities should be provided by libraries/packages/APIs/etc. This is the approach that developers take in pretty much all popular modern languages, e.g., Java, Python, JavaScript, and others. If these developers are able to provide additional functionality without extending the language itself, then ABAP developers must be able to do so too.

Unfortunately, we don’t have a library management system (LMS) in ABAP. Specifically for my point of the ABAP RAP, I’m pretty sure that the model can be made to work even right now, without such a system. By using a global class API, such as the XCO library, this should be possible. But this is what got me thinking about this sad fact that we don’t have an LMS in ABAP.

So, I started wondering whether this could be done with the current state of the language. I actually believe the answer is yes. And this is the idea of this blog post – to demonstrate the technical feasibility of such thing. Keep in mind a few things – there is a significant number of points that I think should work in theory, but I haven’t proven this in practice. Furthermore, this is an idea I got and developed for a few hours, so there could be many points which could be implemented in a much more elegant and/or efficient way. Lastly, none of the mentioned technologies (e.g., abaplib.com, abaplib client) exist yet, they are purely hypothetical. With that in mind, let’s dive in my idea.

abaplib.com

We will start with the place where the ABAP libraries would be hosted. It is a similar idea to the Python Package Index (pypi.org). It would be a software repository. Firstly, it can be used from your browser to explore libraries (pypi analog example – the PyOData project). Additionally, it could be used directly from the SAP system through a client API that would allow the installation of a library. More on this later.

Most importantly, abaplib.com keeps old versions of libraries too. This is very important, because some project may depend on a library’s specific version. Again, this is similar to what happens with pypi, through its release history functionality.

Lastly, each library will have its GUID (globally unique identifier). It must be a short one, not more than 4-5 characters due to ABAP’s very restrictive limit of 30 characters per class name. More on this later.

ABAP library specification

For the idea to work, an ABAP library must follow this structure:

1. Class ZCL_{library name}

• This class serves as the entry point to the library;
• It must NOT be final, so that it can be inherited;
• The class must have only static methods;
  • These static methods can access anything else inside the library;

2. Anything else the library needs – classes, interfaces, subpackages

• These should only be directly accessed through the class from point 1.

Example:

Library abapmath
ZCL_ABAPMATH
ZCL_HELPER

The reasons for the structure will become clear in the next section.

abaplib Client

The client would be installed on your ABAP system using abapGit. It would have some interface (GUI/UI5/REST/CLI-like, possibly all). From this interface, you would be able to download the required libraries for a project.

It would work in the following way:

(1) User inputs their project’s package

(2) Inside this package, the client will create an interface called ZIF_ABAPLIB_{GUID}

• the GUID is randomly generated by the client. It must be unique for the whole system. Also has to be short, 4-5 characters. Again, more on this later.

(3) Inside this interface, the user must define a constant called libraries. It would be a structure, where each column would follow this format:

• {short name for library} TYPE zcl_abaplib=>library VALUE ‘{full library name as specified in abaplib.com}, {version}‘
• Example:

INTERFACE zif_abaplib_a8j7 PUBLIC.
  CONSTANTS:
    BEGIN OF libraries,
      math TYPE zcl_abaplib=>library VALUE 'abapmath, 1.0.0',
    END OF libraries.
ENDINTERFACE.

• Example explained: use the (fictional) abapmath library, using an alias for it – ‘math’. Similar in spirit to import numpy as np in python.
• zcl_abaplib=>library is just a wrapper type for string.

(4) On user request, download all dependencies. From user’s perspective, they just point a package (for which steps 1-3 have been completed) and click “download dependencies”. What happens behind the scenes is as follows:

• (a) The zif_abaplib_{GUID}=>libraries constant is read. The GUID is the one generated for this package in step 3.
• (b) For each library, an HTTP request is sent to abaplib.com to download the relevant library and version. The HTTP request would include as query parameter the GUID for the package. Dependencies of the library itself are also downloaded.
  • Example HTTP request:

GET https://abaplib.com/library/abapmath/download?version=1-0-0&pguid=a8j7

• (c) The response would be a ZIP with the relevant objects of the library. The abaplib server will return the ZIP with the files named as follows:
  • {name}_{package GUID}{library GUID}
  • Example:

abapmath-1.0.0-a8j7.zip

Contains files (XML metadata files not shown for simplicity):

ZCL_ABAPMATH_A8J7MB8D.clas.abap
ZCL_HELPER_A8J7MB8D.clas.abap

The suffixes will be automatically placed by the server, and the library developer will not have to worry about them.

1. • This is how it is ensured that within the same system, the same library can be installed multiple times (in different packages). The name will be unique due to the use of the package GUID. Also, it will ensure no clashes occur between libraries – for example, if two libraries both have the class ZCL_HELPER inside, their library GUID will take care of this.
   • Unfortunately, this means that only about 20 characters will be left for the object’s actual name, but I don’t think there’s any workaround that. Therefore, library developers must be aware of this and never use more than (30 – strlen(package GUID) – strlen(library GUID)) characters.

• (d) abapGit would be used to install the ZIP, in a subpackage named Z_DEPENDENCIES_{package GUID}
• (e) For every class that already exists in the package, the following code is added in its local types:
  • CLASS {short name for library} DEFINITION INHERITING FROM ZCL_{library name}_{package GUID}{library GUID}. ENDCLASS.
  • This is the entry point class described in the previous section (ABAP library specification).
  • Example:

CLASS math DEFINITION INHERITING FROM zcl_abapmath_a8j7mb8d. ENDCLASS.

(5) For every newly created class from here on, step 4.e has to be repeated either manually by user (copy-paste from existing class’ local types), or through the abaplib client.

Usage in user’s code

Let’s continue from now on with our (fictional) abapmath library. We assume it has been downloaded to our system, in the subpackage Z_DEPENDENCIES_A8J7. It offers us a method called floor_sqrt. And that’s all (not the richest library, I know). The method does the following: Given an integer x, find its square root. If x is not a perfect square, then return floor(sqrt(x)). It’s an ABAP implementation of the simple approach described here by GeeksforGeeks.

Since we will be using a library, we don’t really care about the implementation, we just use the abstraction. Still, for completeness sake, here is also the implementation:

CLASS zcl_abapmath_a8j7mb8d DEFINITION PUBLIC CREATE PUBLIC.
  PUBLIC SECTION.
    CLASS-METHODS:
      "! Given an integer x, find its square root. If x is not a perfect square, then return floor(sqrt(x)).
      "!
      "! @parameter num | Integer number to find the floor root for
      "!
      "! @parameter result | Floor square root of number
      floor_sqrt
        IMPORTING num TYPE i
        RETURNING VALUE(result) TYPE i.
ENDCLASS.


CLASS zss_abapmath_a8j7 IMPLEMENTATION.
  METHOD floor_sqrt.
    IF num EQ 0 OR num EQ 1.
      result = num.
    ELSE.
      DATA(i) = 1.
      DATA(temp) = 1.

      WHILE temp <= num.
        i += 1.
        temp = i * i.
      ENDWHILE.

      result = i - 1.
    ENDIF.
  ENDMETHOD.
ENDCLASS.

Lastly, we have some business logic class. The abaplib client has already generated this code in its local types:

CLASS math DEFINITION INHERITING FROM zcl_abapmath_a8j7mb8d. ENDCLASS.

So, from now on, we can call the abapmath library using math=>{method_name}. Here’s an example:

CLASS zcl_some_bl DEFINITION PUBLIC FINAL CREATE PUBLIC.
  PUBLIC SECTION.
    INTERFACES:
      if_oo_adt_classrun.
ENDCLASS.


CLASS zcl_some_bl IMPLEMENTATION.
  METHOD if_oo_adt_classrun~main.
    DATA(my_sqrt) = math=>floor_sqrt( 32 ).
    out->write( my_sqrt ).
  ENDMETHOD.
ENDCLASS.

We also obviously get access to the library documentation:

Our entry point class can access anything else it needs inside its library, as already discussed. Object creation like this will not be the most elegant (no NEW operator), but can still be achieved using a factory pattern without any problem.

Conclusion

I hope I have managed to convey my idea clearly. In my opinion, almost nothing of what I described should be particularly hard to implement, although it will be time-consuming. Only point 4.e. from the section for the abaplib client may be hard to achieve; but, worst case scenario, there could always be work-arounds.

Also, as I mentioned in the beginning, these ideas might not be the most efficient or elegant. Nevertheless, at least the way I see it, they should lead to a fully functioning library management system for ABAP. I think having something like this is a must. It would open a lot of doors for ABAP and ABAP developers.

I’ll be looking forward towards your comments! I am particularly interested in these points:

• Do you find some issue with my idea – both from technical and business POVs?
• Do you think ABAP should have an LMS?
• Would you use an LMS if it was available?

Thanks for reading!