ABAP Platform for SAP S/4HANA 2022

February 18, 2023
Sara Sampaio
Technical Articles

SAP S/4HANA 2022 was released to the SAP customer base on October 12^th, 2022.

ABAP Platform 2022 is the technology platform underlying SAP S/4HANA 2022 and is shipped as part of SAP S/4HANA 2022. In addition, ABAP Platform 2022 is part of SAP S/4HANA Foundation 2022 for SAP HANA-only Add-Ons.

ABAP Platform 2022 is not shipped as a standalone product. ABAP Platform 2022 consists of the AS ABAP, the ABAP Development Tools (ADT) in Eclipse and several additional technology components which are required to run SAP S/4HANA.

Previous SAP S/4HANA version such as 1610, 1709, 1809, 1909, 2020 and 2021 can be upgraded to SAP S/4HANA 2022 which is based on ABAP Platform 2022.

ABAP Platform 2022 delivers innovations for the ABAP stack in different areas.

The new developer extensibility option, which was originally offered in the SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud with SAP S/4HANA Cloud ABAP Environment (aka Embedded Steampunk), is now available in the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition as well as in SAP S/4HANA on-premise. The developer extensibility offers to SAP customers and partners the opportunity to build tightly coupled, cloud-ready, and upgrade-stable extensions directly on the SAP S/4HANA stack. The technical enablement of ABAP cloud-ready development requires restrictions such as the use of the cloud-optimized ABAP language and released local and remote APIs and objects. The use of the developer extensibility makes it easier to reach a clean core when building extensions which must run on the SAP S/4HANA stack.

One of the key investment areas in the ABAP Platform remains the ABAP RESTful application programming model (RAP). RAP is the recommended application programming model for efficiently building enterprise-grade, cloud-ready SAP Fiori apps and web APIs on the ABAP platform. Developers can use RAP whether they are starting from scratch or reusing existing business logic, both on-premise and in the cloud. Various new RAP features and capabilities have been delivered with ABAP Platform 2022. For instance, different options to develop lifecycle-stable and upgrade-safe extensions for a RAP business object (BO) on each layer of the RAP development stack are provided. Built-in extensibility options for data models, behaviors, and nodes of RAP BOs are provided. These options enable the development of full-fledged, upgrade-stable extensions on SAP S/4HANA and SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private and public editions. Developers can easily define and raise business events in RAP BO behaviors and RAP BO behavior extensions. This native business event integration enables lightweight, decoupled process integration based on standardized and stable APIs. The export and import of binary large objects (aka OData Streams) can now be easily enabled in in SAP Fiori elements-based apps built with RAP. The Read Access Logging (RAL) can now be used to monitor database read accesses performed in RAP services.

ABAP Development Tools in Eclipse in ABAP Platform 2022 deliver various enhancements for RAP, ABAP CDS and ABAP for SAP HANA developments. The Generate ABAP Repository Objects wizard makes it possible to generate RAP artifacts for an end-to-end transactional application based on a database table. The RAP Business Object test double framework enables you to isolate your code under test from the dependency on the EML statement call to the RAP Business Objects. The BO context of the Relation Explorer was enhanced by giving you more information about actions, their behavior characteristics, draft actions and associations. Enterprise event enablement and integration with SAP Event Mesh is now supported. The new RAP Business Event Bindings editor allows developers to define the mapping between RAP business events and the external representation of business events from SAP Event Mesh on SAP BTP. The additional improvements are offered in the source code tools, like new editors (for example for Number Range or Application Job objects) or support of restricted ABAP language syntax. Further developer productivity enhancements were implemented in the debugger like support of message breakpoints or download of ABAP value statements for internal table or structure for easy test data creation. Beyond this, various enhancements were done in working with transports, like moving objects between transport tasks and requests, and documentability capabilities, like KTD documents for ATC checks.

ABAP Platform 2022 also offers several enhancements in the code analysis tools. The Custom Code Migration App was reunited with SAP GUI based ABAP Test Cockpit (ATC) in the sense that now it is possible to create ATC run series in the app and schedule them in the ATC, further on Custom Code Migration app analysis results can be analyzed in the SAP GUI based ATC. The Custom Code Migration App in ABAP Platform 2022 now supports classic ATC custom code analysis projects. It has also become possible and is recommended to maintain ATC check variants and implement custom ATC checks directly in the ABAP Development Tools in Eclipse.

Connectivity, integration, and security areas were further optimized in the ABAP Platform 2022 like for example enablement of support of business event consumption, offering the capability for the quick activation and consumption of services (SOAP, OData V2, OData V4), support of OpenID Connect (OIDC) for logon to ABAP systems, traceability of changes in the secure by default settings, restriction of data access for financial auditors and support of IANA time zones in ABAP user settings.

This document will be updated. Stay tuned to get the latest ABAP Platform 2022 news.

Latest News

October 12th, 2022: SAP S/4HANA 2022 based on ABAP Platform 2022 is generally available!

At a Glance

Foundation for SAP S/4HANA 2022, SAP HANA-only Add-Ons and custom applications
SAP S/4HANA versions such as 1511, 1610, 1709, 1809, 1909, 2020 and 2021 can be upgraded to SAP S/4HANA 2022
No standalone ABAP platform installation supported
New ABA layer
Supports only SAP HANA database with full exploitation of its advanced capabilities
Continuous innovation without disruption
Seamless end-to-end development experience in Eclipse
Extensible to the cloud with SAP Business Technology Platform