Greetings to fellow SAP ABAP developers from around the world. I have just decided to start a new ABAP blog (yes, yet another) and this first post is here just to share my excitement.
So why another ABAP blog?
Of course I know there are already many ABAP blogs and tutorial sites who are actually doing great job. They give us useful tips on solving problems. But I will not only focus on solving problems but another aspect of programming: quality of code.
I always thought, especially in SAP consultancy world, quality is an underrated and overlooked aspect. This has many times returned as unhappy customers, overworking, repetetive tasks and delayed delivery dates. This last one is also ironic becuase we think we are overlooking quality in turn of time. I won’t deny there is time cost of quality in short term and I know it is tough to get accepted with a later “initial” delivery date especially in a world like SAP consultancy where time equals money (literally!). I think the key here is “being prepared”. Just have a look back in time and you will see that you have done the almost same tasks many times. Nearly every ABAP developer has a report template kept handy when a simple get-data-and-display type of report is required. But I saw developers (including myself) rediscovering application log functions when they need a simple message list popup. So I will provide utility code, templates and demo programs throughout the life span of this blog to make our jobs easier.
Why am I sharing my knowledge?
You might ask why I am not keeping my knowledge to myself. I have been working as an SAP development consultant for almost 7 years and the most painful task I had to face is maintaining badly written code. You may have heard some developer, who is asked to fix some bug in a report, looking at the code and replying “let me do this report from scratch”. I hope this blog will help people (and possibly me) having ABAP programs more robust, readable and maintainable.
Guideline
Unlike other modern development platforms, ABAP development is heavily dominated by procedural (functional) programming. I will try to make a change here and will be mostly using object oriented approach and design patterns in my code samples. This is purely a step to come closer to modern development paradigms in order to understand their patterns and apply them to ABAP development to enhance quality or functionality of our programs. In this blog, I will not try to compare those approaches or will not try to explain why one is better than the other.
ABAP is a constantly evolving language thanks to SAP. This evolution created some obsolete elements, statements and functions throughout time. I will try to stay away from those elements in regard of the purpose of this blog. So say goodbye to HEADER LINE and ON CHANGE OF.
Thanks to John of simpleprogrammer.com
Before finalizing my foreword to this blog, I would like to take my opportunity to thank to the person who encouraged me to start this blog, John Sonmez of http://simpleprogrammer.com which is a great programming blog. You might also want to check his email course on blogging: http://devcareerboost.com/blog-course/