SAP Enhancement Technologies
This article aims to give a brief introduction about the SAP Enhancement technologies. The standard deliveried sap programs do not always meet the requirement, so enhancment is an very importment part in the ABAP development. SAP provide several technologies to support developer to enhance the standard logic.
1. User exit.
Actually user exit is not part of enhancement technology, as it need us to enter access key to modify it. But sap delivery these user exit form routines in seperate include files and will not overwrite them in the upgrade version. So we can feel free to modify them.
Naming conversion of user exit is like ‘USEREXIT_XXX’.
2. ABAP Dictionary Enhancement
We can do below activities using dictionary enhancement.
- Enhancement table/structure with append structure.
- Enhancement table/structure with customer include.
- Use field exit to enhance the screen logic.
3. Customer exit
Use customer exit, we can easy enhance the program logic using function module exits, add custom fcode in menu using menu exits and add z field to the custom screen using screen exits.
If we use custom exit, we always need to use below two function codes: CMOD and SMOD.
4. BTE (Business Transaction Events)
BTE is an enhancement technology that is developed especially for FI module. Compared with earlier releases, the software delivery process now looks quite different. Previously, only two parties were involved in the delivery: SAP produced the software, and delivered it to its end-customers. Customers could enhance this standard using customer exits. However, now that the software is more component-oriented, more parties have become involved in the process: SAP provides the R/3 standard to each SAP Industry Solution, which uses it as a basis to add on its own encapsulated functions. The next link in the chain might be a partner firm, which builds its own Complementary Software Program (CSP) solution based on R/3. The last link in the chain is the customer, as before.
5. BADI (Business Add-ins)
BADI is a new enhancement technique. From the technical point of view, it is the union of the customer exit and business transaction event. It use the object oriented programing compared with BTE.
6. Enhancement Framework and New BADI technique
The newest method to enhancement the ABAP system. It includes:
- Source Code Plugin
- Function Group Enhancement
- Class Enhancement
Both enhancment framework and new BADI can be turned on and turned off by switch framwork.
7. Requirements & Formulas
In some case, we need to define requirement and formulas using function code VOFM. It is always used in customizing.
In the following articles, we will give a detailed introduciton and provide examples for each enhancemement technologies.