Technical Articles

Naresh Jangam

July 10, 2023 3 minute read

Extensibility in S4HANA Cloud

Hello Reader,

This blog will help in understanding the basics of ABAP and Extensibility in S/4HANA Public and Private Cloud.

Evolution of ABAP
ABAP Objects
Comparison between Private and Public Cloud.
Extensibility( In-App, Developer & Side-by-Side)

Evolution of ABAP to RESTful ABAP abap

In the Classic ABAP Programming, developers used to do development in SE38,SE80, Module/Screen programming , Classes, Odata Services to build SAP GUI Applications, Webdynpro Applications.

From EHP7.5 ABAP Programming with Fiori is supported. In this model, we can use Eclipse (ABAP Development Toolkit) , Annotation based CDS views,Odata services for building Fiori apps with or without using UI5.

From S/4HANA 1808, RAP ( Restful ABAP Programing) model is available to build Cloud applications in ABAP BTP environment.

Please refer the blog for more details:

https://blogs.sap.com/2019/05/23/sap-cloud-platform-abap-restful-programming-model-rap-for-beginners/

ABAP Objects(RICEF&W)

objects

ABAP Dictionary Objects includes Data elements, Domains, Structures, Tables,Views, Type Group, Search help and Lock Objects.

Data Element contains semantic characteristics of the field ( Label and F1 help documentation)

Domain: specifies the technical characteristics of a table field (Type, Length)

Structure: Collection of data elements, structures, table types, or database tables, which does have physical data stored in it.

Table: Collection of fields which has data stored physically in a Database. We have Transparent, Pooled and Cluster tables.

Search help: Displays all the possible values for a field in the form of a list

Lock Object: synchronize access to the same data by more than one program by enqueue and dequeue

Reports Interfaces Conversions Enhancements Forms & Workflows

Reports: will fetch the data from the database tables or group of tables and display in the required format to the end user. Types: Classical, Interactive, ALV, Logical DB(SE36), ABAP Query( SQ00)

Interfaces: Programs for downloading or uploading of data from/to flat file ( Open data set, transfer)

ALE/Idocs or BDC.

Conversions: Conversion/transferring of data from one format to another.

LSMW ( Batch Direct Input, Recording, BAPI, Idoc)
Data Oriented: BDC
Function Oriented : RFC
Object Oriented: BAPI

Enhancements/Exits: Custom developments for all the business needs.

Menu exit, screen exit, field exit( text, table ), function exit

CMOD,SMOD , Badis(SE18)
Enhancements ( Implicit, explicit SE19)

Forms : For printing/hard copy of business documents .

Scripts, Smartforms, Adobe forms.

Workflow : To accomplish the tasks in which decision making is involved.

Please refer the blog for more details:

https://blogs.sap.com/2014/05/20/ricefws-in-sap-projects-and-role-of-functional-consultant/

Private Vs Public Cloud

The major difference is with Infrastructure and Customization.

Please refer the blog for more details:

https://blogs.sap.com/2022/04/04/difference-between-sap-s-4hana-public-vs-private-edition-rise-with-sap/

Extensibility in Cloud

Extensibility covers a broad spectrum of topics that allow customers and partners to adapt standard business software to their business needs. This includes business configuration, integration, custom fields, and logic, layout adaptation of user interface (UI), forms, and reports. It also covers custom terminology and translation for customer-specific applications.

Extensibility

In-App Extensibility

Empowers Business users to build extensions mostly without a single line of code.

Capabilities:

– UI Adapt (Rename, Add Field, Remove)

– Custom Fields and Logic

– Custom Objects & Core Data Services ( CDS) views

Please refer the blog for more details:

https://blogs.sap.com/2022/11/15/sap-s-4hana-extensibility-simplified-guide-for-beginners/

Developer Extensibility

On-stack developer extensibility allows ABAP developers to connect to an SAP S/4HANA system using the ABAP Development Tools. This feels almost like developing custom ABAP code on an SAP S/4HANA on-premise system.

On-stack developer extensibility offers the standard ADT tool support like ABAP Unit, ABAP Test Cockpit, ABAP profiler, ABAP debugger and the well-known SAP lifecycle management (change and transport system).

developer

Please refer the blog for more details:

https://blogs.sap.com/2022/11/15/sap-s-4hana-extensibility-simplified-guide-for-beginners/

Side-by-Side Extensibility

Side-by-Side Extensibility allows to build extensions on SAP BTP. True decoupling between extensions and SAP S/4HANA enables an independent lifecycle and allows to build and evolve applications much faster.

SAP BTP offers a wide range of capabilities and services tailored to the needs of enterprise applications.

side