Make use of ABAP Cloud support in the ABAP development tools for Eclipse (ADT)

Since October 2022 the new SAP S/4HANA 2022 release is available for SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition and for on-premise customers. With this release SAP provides the first version of the ABAP cloud development model in these SAP S/4HANA editions.

The ABAP cloud development model is available and mandatory for SAP BTP, ABAP environment and SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition.

The information provided in this blog post applies to SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition and SAP S/4HANA on-premise, where ABAP Cloud is recommended, but not mandatory.

ABAP development tools for Eclipse offers different capabilities to support your development tasks with ABAP Cloud  like switching the ABAP language version to cloud development, finding out if the object is released for cloud development, looking for released objects in the system, releasing the custom objects for usage within the cloud development and much more.

Below you will find some main examples, which should help you to become trusted with the ABAP Cloud support in the ABAP development tools for Eclipse.

Switch ABAP language version for cloud development

If you want to set up your software component for ABAP cloud development or enforce ABAP Cloud usage for your package, you can switch the ABAP language version to „ABAP for Cloud Development“ on the software component level or package level directly in the editor:

For selective use of ABAP Cloud on the object level it is also possible to change the ABAP language version on the individual custom object level for source code objects, CDS views and DDIC objects. It can be fulfilled in the Properties View under General properties. The following example shows how to change the ABAP language version to “ABAP for Cloud Development” for the ABAP class:

CAUTION: in the SAP S/4HANA< 2022 releases the switching of ABAP language version is only possible for ABAP source code objects.

If you change the ABAP language version for your custom ABAP object, the syntax check will be executed automatically, will detect the incompatibilities in your custom code object with the “ABAP for Cloud Development” language version and consequently report syntax errors:

Examine if the object is released for cloud development

You can also display the release state of the object. In the Properties View under the API State you can examine the release state of an object and see if it is released for use in cloud development:

Also in the Properties View under the API State you can see which successor object to use instead of the object which is not released for cloud development. In this example the CDS View I_BUSINESSPARTNER should be used instead of direct access to the table BUT000:

Display released APIs and objects in the system

You can create your own ABAP Repository Tree (context menu New->ABAP Repository Tree on the project node in the Project Explorer) to display the released APIs and objects in the system grouped by the SAP Application Component for example:

After that you will be able to view the released objects in the Project Explorer per Application Component and see for example, which local public APIs or local extensions points are released for ABAP Cloud and can be used to extend the SAP Application Component of your specific need:

More details are provided in the Finding Released APIs documentation on SAP Help Portal.

Search for released APIs and objects

You can also search in the system for released APIs. For this you can use the ABAP Object Search (Ctrl + H) along with the corresponding Property Filter (use Ctrl + Space shortcut in the Property Filter field to get the content assistance on available properties). In this way you can display for example all CDS Views, which are released for ABAP Cloud:

Alternatively you can also use the Open ABAP Development Object (Ctrl + Shift +A) dialog along with the Property Filter:

Release a custom API for cloud development

If you implement a custom wrapper for non-released SAP objects you would also need to release it for cloud development. You can fulfill this task by adding the release contract and setting the release state to „Released“ for „Use in Cloud Development“:

More details are provided in the Setting the API Release State documentation on SAP Help Portal.

Check and adapt your custom code for ABAP Cloud readiness

You can also use ABAP development tools for Eclipse for custom code analysis and adaptation for ABAP Cloud. See also the blog How to make your custom code cloud-ready and upgrade-stable for more details.