ABAP Platform for SAP S/4HANA 2021

[OlgaDolinskaja]

SAP S/4HANA 2021 was released to the SAP customer base on 13^th of October, 2021.

ABAP Platform 2021 is the technology platform underlying SAP S/4HANA 2021 and is shipped as part of SAP S/4HANA 2021. In addition, ABAP Platform 2021 is part of SAP S/4HANA Foundation 2021 for SAP HANA-only Add-Ons.

ABAP Platform 2021 is not shipped as a standalone product. ABAP Platform 2021 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 versions such as 1511, 1610, 1709, 1809, 1909 and 2020 can be upgraded to SAP S/4HANA 2021 which is based on ABAP Platform 2021.

ABAP Platform 2021 delivers innovations for the ABAP stack in different areas.

One of the major investment areas in the ABAP Platform is the ABAP RESTful Application Programming Model (RAP). RAP comprises essential extensions of the ABAP language, ABAP Core Data Services (CDS), development tools, and frameworks which enable the efficient end-to-end development of intrinsically SAP HANA-optimized SAP Fiori applications and web services on the AS ABAP. The feature scope of the ABAP RESTful application programming model has been further enhanced with the ABAP Platform 2021. Just to name a few of the delivered enhancements, RAP now supports the implementation of the unmanaged early numbering in managed and unmanaged business objects. Business objects supporting multi-inline editing on an SAP Fiori UI can now be implemented. SAP Information Access (InA) and SQL based services can now be created with the service binding editor to support respectively analytical scenarios with live data connection and data integration scenarios with ODBC based clients. Various enhancements have also been delivered for determinations, actions, validations, the feature control, the authorization control, and the projection layer.

ABAP Development Tools in Eclipse in ABAP Platform 2021 deliver various enhancements for RAP, ABAP CDS and ABAP for SAP HANA developments like, for example, preview analytical queries app, creation of service consumption model for RFC, service binding editor for OData V4 services or quick fixes for creating behavior implementations. ABAP Cross Trace was designed for ABAP developers who build OData services or other ABAP functionality related to the RAP and provides root cause analysis of RAP based applications incl. processing of OData requests, for example, in SAP Fiori apps. Further implementation efforts were applied for the extension of the feature scope like new ADT editors for Text Elements, Application Log objects and ATC check variants. Enhancements in the documentability capabilities and ADT basics tutorial for beginners and tips and tricks are targeted to make your daily work with the ABAP Development Tools in Eclipse easier.

The Custom Code Migration App in ABAP Platform 2021 was extended to support replatforming projects especially for custom code transformation to SAP BTP ABAP Environment. Dependency analysis enables customers and partners to set up the dashboards to track down dependency of custom code with SAP standard based on calls to SAP application APIs or DB accesses to SAP tables. Dependency analysis provides input for the decision making for custom code transformation to the SAP BTP ABAP Environment.

Further enhancements were done in the areas of connectivity, integration, and security like, for example, creation and consumption of proxies to trigger operations on remote SOAP and RFC services​, OAuth authentication for SOAP, HTTP​. Specially for better logging and for auditing purposes new apps were delivered to display static system information or security events. In addition, the scope and coverage of secure by default settings were extended in SAP S/4HANA 2021.

This document will be regularly updated. Stay tuned to be informed about the latest ABAP Platform 2021 news.

 

Latest News

October 13th, 2021:  SAP S/4HANA 2021 based on ABAP Platform 2021 is generally available!

 

At a Glance 

• Foundation for SAP S/4HANA 2021, SAP HANA-only Add-Ons and custom applications


• SAP S/4HANA versions such as 1511, 1610, 1709, 1809, 1909 and 2020 can be upgraded to SAP S/4HANA 2021


• 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
  

 

Product Highlights

 

Overview Presentation

This presentation provides the official slide deck, just click on it to view:

 

Useful Blogs 

Modernization with the ABAP RESTful Application Programming Model (RAP)

ABAP Keyword Documentation 2021 – Supporting RAP

New Kinds of ABAP Expressions

Regular Expressions (RegEx) in Modern ABAP

How to Migrate Your CDS DDIC-based Views to CDS View Entities

Working with Hierarchies in ABAP SQL


Getting Helpful Tips & Tricks When Working with ADT

Getting Started Help Content for ABAP Development Tools (ADT)

Benefit from Using Code Templates When Creating Data Definitions

How Do You Learn Best ABAP CDS Development Using ADT?

How to backup custom code with gCTS


The story resumes – Secure By Default for SAP S/4HANA 2021

 

Useful Links

Release Notes for ABAP Platform 2021

Documentation on SAP Help Portal

Product Availability Matrix (PAM)

The ABAP Platform Strategy (2021 Update)

ABAP Platform Releases and Consumers

ABAP Sessions at SAP TechEd in 2021

SAP Note 3075227 – ABAP Platform 2021 – General information

 

Previous landing pages

ABAP Platform for SAP S/4HANA 2020

ABAP Platform for SAP S/4HANA 1909

ABAP Platform for SAP S/4HANA 1809

SAP NetWeaver AS for ABAP 7.52

SAP NetWeaver AS ABAP 7.50

 

 

 

[hatrigt]

*New ABAP layer 😅. Thanks for the blog btw.

[OlgaDolinskaja]

New ABA layer is available since SAP S/4HANA 1809.

[S0000839939]

Thank you Olga , great to have a good summary of the new features!

[SergioFerrari]

Thank you Olga for wrapping-up the 2021 related news in such a short time from the release date.

This blog is a great launchpad for the exciting ABAP 2021 learning journey.

A small curiosity: I can see a lot of improvements to ADT and I am wondering to know its adoption level. Is 2021 the milestone for ADT to win against /nSE80 or the competition will still last lot of years (with focus only on S/4) ?

[OlgaDolinskaja]

Hi Sergio,

thank you for your nice feedback!

The adaption of ADT in Eclipse is going its way ahead. In all our ABAP customers workshops the hands-on exercises have ADT in Eclipse as a prerequisite, and many people already know it well. Of course there are still some areas, where SE80 is sufficient (like for example maintenance tasks on old releases), and for people doing this work there is no need to switch to the ADT. Therefore I would not see ADT and SE80 in a competition. Of course the adaption of SAP S/4HANA drives adaption of ADT in Eclipse, but many people use it also already on ERP.

Kind Regards,

Olga.

[SyambabuAllu]

Hi Olga,

It’s really helpful blog..Thanks for sharing!!

Thank you,

Syam

[MustafaBensan]

Hi Olga,

With respect to the following comment:

SAP Information Access (InA) and SQL based services can now be created with the service binding editor to support respectively analytical scenarios with live data connection and data integration scenarios with ODBC based clients.

Does this mean that InA-based OData services can be generated for consumption by custom analytical UI5 apps?  If so, are you able to point me to any documentation that would provide technical information about using this capability?

Thanks,

Mustafa.

[CarineTchoutouo]

Hi Mustafa,

The InA-based services can be consumed in SAP Analytics Cloud to build apps – e.g. to build stories like explained here. UI5 controls do not yet support the InA protocol.

Hope this helps.

Kind regards,
Carine

[MauriSoberanes]

Where can I download this?

SAP S/4HANA 2021

[OlgaDolinskaja]

Hi Mauricio,

https://support.sap.com/en/my-support/software-downloads.html ("Access Downloads" under Installation & Upgrades)

Please consider the installation and upgrade guides: https://help.sap.com/docs/SAP_S4HANA_ON-PREMISE?task=implement_task

Kind Regards,

Olga.

[StephanHeinberg]

Dear Olga,

with the new announced release strategy for SAP S/4HANA 2023, there will be only a mayor release of S/4 every second year.

What happens with the release strategy of the ABAP platform for S/4? Will you start to ship all innovations of the ABAP platform with a Feature Package?

 

Thanks,

Stephan

[OlgaDolinskaja]

Hello Stephan,

ABAP platform will ship its innovations with the major SAP S/4HANA release. Continuous improvements and corrections which do not require a new ABAP kernel version will be shipped with the SAP S/4HANA Feature Packs.

Kind Regards,

Olga.

[former_member208609]

Hello Olga,

olga.dolinskaja Do you plan a similar blog and document for the 2022 release?

Best regards

Renaud

[OlgaDolinskaja]

Hi Renaud,

sure :-), it is currently in preparation.

Best Regards,

Olga.

[former_member208609]

Awesome!! Thanks for super fast answer!