Book review: Discover ABAP
I have been working with SAP BW for some years now and ABAP coding has always been a pain in the ass for me. Fact is, also within BW you can’t really get around without any ABAP knowledge. It is used to enhance data extractors, to transform the data within the BW data model (with the start, field, end and expert routines in transformations) and to create variables to make dynamic selections in queries, DTP’s and InfoPackages.
So most of the time I just looked at some pieces of existing code, copied it, searched Google or SAP Help, tweaked it a bit so it eventually did what I wanted it to do, and went on. Just like I managed to do this with html, php and other coding languages for the last 15 years. If things got too complex I turned to a ABAP-consultant who normally managed to solve these problems in a few minutes doing some magic tricks that always seem simple when you read the code afterwards.
Now I found this book Discover ABAP by Karl-Heinz Kühnhauser ($39,95) which promises to give you a 101 course on the ABAP basics for us n00bs, so I decided to try it. Although this book is on the market for a few years already I still want to acknowledge it here.
This book is easy to read, gives many many examples, explains every concept in details and keeps things simple to understand. Kühnhauser demonstrates how to get the data from tables, use variables, transform or modify values, make calculations with them, use internal tables and how to set up logical expressions. Furthermore the Function Modules are discussed and the book shows how you can use them in your code.
I think that over 70% of the book’s text consist of examples or explaining them (line by line!!) which is very important for newcomers. All features of the ABAP editor are explained and it shows you how to really use the Debugger.
Since I only want to use ABAP in the BW domain (no, I don’t have any ambition to be a ABAP programmer someday!) I could fast-read/skip most of the sections on the data dictionary, creating database tables and building selection screens. But I think still 80%+ of the book was useful for me.
The only thing I miss in this book is the follow up advice on where to go next if you want to learn more. But if you are curious about the basics of ABAP you should check out this book for sure!
HackingSAP.com - Jul 30, 2011 | Books, SAP
Tagged | ABAP, SAP Press
