Using AI in ABAP development

[larshp]

My development setup

I typically use vscode for writing ABAP code in a standalone setup, editing just local files and committing those to git, this works on low-end laptops and tablets just fine.

I guess its also possible to use the ABAP remote file system extension from murbani, but I've not tested it.

The beginnings

I first tried GitHub Copilot back in the summer of 2021, it did give some suggestions, but had many syntax errors, so I switched it off again after a few hours of playing around.



 

Now, Today!

Now I've been consistently using Copilot for the last month or so. And it has become part of my development flow, helping me to type less.

Its not perfect, but very useful especially when doing scaffolding or code that is very symmetric.

I've collected some of the good examples below,

Working as typeahead intellisense,

And scaffolding unit test methods,

 

The process

I think, AI should not save and activate objects directly in the ABAP system. Instead changes should happen locally, so the developer can verify the changes. After verification the changes can be committed to git.

This triggers the normal quality assurance process in the pull request, kicking off static static analysis, automated unit testing and manual peer review.

After the peer review is done, the changes can be pulled to the central ABAP development system.

[huseyindereli]

I got your extension and copilot but never get a chance to write abap code in vscode. My first resolution for 2024 is this now.

Thanks for sharing 🙏

[MarcelloUrbani]

Used to work fine in my extension back in 2021 . Didn't test it since as my employer forbids it. Was amazing then ( at least for boilerplate), I bet it's much better now

[PRAGSMATIC]

The more you train, the better it gets

[Attila]

ABAP Remote file system is also an option, despite I miss all the benefits of an IDE + an AI ABAP plugin combo, which is context aware and knows DDIC etc. The current approaches available are just using a text editor with CoPilot. To my knowledge SAP is preparing something. I would expect that it uses also an indexed codebase of the ABAP system on which it is running on, to provide hints. Many of us do where-used-list search how-to provide parameters of standard API class etc, and to declare data objects on the actual version You,re working on. I would also expect, that asking a question how-to implement something, a corresponding public/local APIs are suggested.

[osmutny]

on the other note, GitHub copilot chat is quite a helpful friend I must say

attaching some example of conversation, what I found extremely useful is the fact that he's apparently trained on a context and he knows HCM component...so he boilerplates it with real data elements and so on.. from my perspective it's a helper. Even knows about ADT and how to create that in code based editor.

unit tests generation ( skeleton ) and suggests how to refactor the code

we are still at the beginning of working with chat ( sometimes it's great helper - less typing, sometimes he suggests 'better' code that is already in place ), but at first look I can only recommend to play around with it, even for ABAP !