Official ABAP Programming Guidelines

... Foreword ... 13

... Acknowledgments ... 15

1 ... Introduction ... 17
... 1.1 ... What Are Programming Guidelines ... 17
... 1.2 ... Why Programming Guidelines ... 18
... 1.3 ... Which Guidelines Are Involved Here ... 18
... 1.4 ... Target Audience ... 19
... 1.5 ... How to Use This Book ... 20

2 ... General Basic Rules ... 23
... 2.1 ... Separation of Concerns ... 23
... 2.2 ... KISS Principle ... 32
... 2.3 ... Correctness and Quality ... 34

3 ... ABAP-Specific Basic Rules ... 41
... 3.1 ... ABAP Objects as a Programming Model ... 41
... 3.2 ... Program Type and Program Attributes ... 50
... 3.3 ... Modern ABAP ... 62
... 3.4 ... Checks for Correctness ... 65

4 ... Structure and Style ... 79
... 4.1 ... Source Code Formatting ... 80
... 4.2 ... Naming ... 91
... 4.3 ... Comments ... 115
... 4.4 ... Program and Procedure Structure ... 123
... 4.5 ... Source Code Organization ... 130
... 4.6 ... Alternative Notations ... 135
... 4.7 ... Complexity ... 146

5 ... Architecture ... 155
... 5.1 ... Object-Oriented Programming ... 155
... 5.2 ... Error Handling ... 172
... 5.3 ... User Interfaces ... 195
... 5.4 ... Data Storage ... 208

6 ... Secure and Robust ABAP ... 217
... 6.1 ... Data Types and Data Objects ... 217
... 6.2 ... Assignments, Calculations, and Other Accesses to Data ... 241
... 6.3 ... System Fields ... 262
... 6.4 ... Internal Tables ... 273
... 6.5 ... Modularization Units ... 287
... 6.6 ... Dynamic Programming Techniques ... 309
... 6.7 ... Internationalization ... 329

A ... Obsolete Language Constructs ... 341
... A.1 ... Procedures ... 342
... A.2 ... Declarations ... 343
... A.3 ... Object Generation ... 347
... A.4 ... Calls and Exits ... 347
... A.5 ... Program Flow Control ... 349
... A.6 ... Assignments ... 350
... A.7 ... Calculation Statements ... 352
... A.8 ... Processing Character and Byte Strings ... 353
... A.9 ... Internal Tables ... 355
... A.10 ... Dynpro Flow Logic ... 357
... A.11 ... Classical List Processing ... 358
... A.12 ... Data Storage ... 360
... A.13 ... Contexts ... 362
... A.14 ... External Interfaces ... 363

B ... Automatic Check of Naming Conventions ... 365
... B.1 ... Naming Conventions in the Code Inspector ... 365
... B.2 ... Type-Specific Prefix Components ... 366
... B.3 ... Prefixes for Procedure-Local Declarations ... 367
... B.4 ... Structured Programming ... 369
... B.5 ... Object-Oriented Programming ... 370
... B.6 ... Assessment of the Naming Conventions ... 371

C ... Table of Rules ... 373

D ... Recommended Reading ... 377

E ... The Authors ... 379

... Index ... 381