I stumble upon this really great SDN article about ABAP debugging tips and found out that there is actually 2 ways to debug a popup window.

Option 1: From any SAP windows click the “Generate a Shortcut” button and in the window that appears make the below changes and click “Finish”. A file will be generated on the location you specified. Now drag the file onto the popup window and your ABAP debugger should be switched on!

Make sure to set the Title, Type, Command, and Location.

Option 2: Create a text file (any file name will do) anywhere on your computer where you could easily get it, and type the code below and save it:
[codesyntax lang="c++" lines="no" title=""]
[FUNCTION]
Command=/h
Title=Debugger
Type=SystemCommand
[/codesyntax]

Same thing with option 1, you may drag this file onto the popup window to switched on the ABAP debugger.
Enjoy!

It is hard to tell which enhancement points are available for the process you want to customize. There’s very little documentation, and it could take an SAP developer several hours to find the best point. But thanks to Panaya team, we can now enjoy ABAPNinja.

ABAPNinja is a free web site that allows us to quickly search for the best enhancement points for our business process. How did they do it? According to their website, deciding which enhancement points impact a given transaction, directly or indirectly, is not an easy feat, to say the least. There are some 13,000 enhancement points, and over 60,000 SAP transactions, which gives over a billion possible combinations. They have have analyzed close to 250 Million lines of ERP 6.0 code, using Panaya’s program comprehension technology, and a grid of 50 servers over a period of one month, to compile this huge database. Then then used Ruby on Rails to format the data as web pages.

Try it out now, go to www.abapninja.org and enjoy searching for enhancement points!

SAPlink is a project that aims to make it easier to share ABAP developments between programmers. It provides the ability to easily distribute and package custom objects.

Below is the site for the complete instructions on how to install and use SAPlink.
SAPlink User Documentation

Another good thing with this program is a functionality to generate an excel file template. The image below shows the actual screenshot.

I modified the SAP standard program BDCRECX1 and saved it as ZBDCRECX1. I used this for my BDC upload program instead of the standard BDCRECX1 include. You may download the source code of ZBDCRECX1 on the link below. I also included a sample upload program utilizing the ZBDCRECX1 include.

zbdc_template.zip

Enjoy coding!

Assuming you already have an ABAP program with ALV report, what you need to do is add a button or menu that will trigger the function that will export the ALV data to Excel file. but before that let’s start first with the declaration of types and variables that we’re going to use.

[codesyntax lang="abap" lines="no" title="VARIABLE DECLARATION"]
TYPE-POOLS ole2. ” we will use OLE objects
DATA: v_excel TYPE ole2_object, ” Excel object
v_wrkbkl TYPE ole2_object, ” list of workbooks
v_wrkbk TYPE ole2_object, ” workbook
v_cell TYPE ole2_object, ” cell
v_font TYPE ole2_object, ” font
v_row TYPE i. ” row
[/codesyntax]

Now we’re done with the variable declaration, let’s proceed to the main program. We will create 3 forms: One is for the preparation of the Excel file, second is for the data export from alv cells to excel cells, and third is for error handling.

The code below is for the preparation of excel application object.

[codesyntax lang="abap" lines="no" title="EXPORT_TO_EXCEL"]
* it_main and wa_main is the tables used in your ALV
FORM export_to_excel TABLES p_it_main STRUCTURE wa_main.

* Create Excel object
CREATE OBJECT v_excel ‘EXCEL.APPLICATION’.

* Call Error_handler form
PERFORM Error_Handler.

* Show excel window
SET PROPERTY OF v_excel ‘Visible’ = 1.

* get list of workbooks, initially empty
CALL METHOD OF v_excel ‘Workbooks’ = v_wrkbkl.
PERFORM Error_Handler.

* add a new workbook to workbook list
CALL METHOD OF v_wrkbkl ‘Add’ = v_wrkbk.
PERFORM Error_Handler.

* export ALV column header to Excel
* PERFORM export_data USING rows columns boldfont value
PERFORM export_data USING 1 1 1 ‘header_1'.
PERFORM export_data USING 1 2 1 ‘header_2'.
PERFORM export_data USING 1 3 1 ‘header_3'.
PERFORM export_data USING 1 4 1 ‘header_4'.
PERFORM export_data USING 1 5 1 ‘header_5'.

* Loop through ALV rows and fields and transfer data to Excel
LOOP AT p_it_main INTO wa_main.
v_row = sy-tabix + 1.
PERFORM export_data USING v_row 1 0 wa_bill-field1.
PERFORM export_data USING v_row 2 0 wa_bill-field2.
PERFORM export_data USING v_row 3 0 wa_bill-field3.
PERFORM export_data USING v_row 4 0 wa_bill-field4.
PERFORM export_data USING v_row 5 0 wa_bill-field5.
ENDLOOP.
FREE OBJECT v_excel.
PERFORM error_handler.
ENDFORM.
[/codesyntax]

The next code is for the export_data form.

[codesyntax lang="abap" lines="no" title="EXPORT_DATA"]
FORM export_data USING x y z val.
CALL METHOD OF v_excel ‘Cells’ = v_cell
exporting
#1 = x
#2 = y.
PERFORM error_handler.

SET PROPERTY OF v_cell ‘Value’ = val.
PERFORM error_handler.

GET PROPERTY OF v_cell ‘Font’ = v_font.
PERFORM error_handler.

SET PROPERTY OF v_font ‘Bold’ = z .
PERFORM error_handler.
ENDFORM.
[/codesyntax]

And for the code of error_handler form.

[codesyntax lang="abap" lines="no" title="ERROR_HANDLER"]
FORM error_handler.
IF sy-subrc <> 0.
CALL METHOD OF v_excel ‘QUIT'.
FREE OBJECT v_excel.
v_excel-handle = -1.
MESSAGE: ‘Failed to export to Excel.’ TYPE ‘E'.
ENDIF.
ENDFORM.
[/codesyntax]

Now that we’ve completed all the 3 forms, all you have to do now is call the export_to_excel form to initiate the export. In the example below, I call the export_to_excel form on user command ‘M_EXP’.

[codesyntax lang="abap" lines="no" title="USER_COMMAND"]
FORM f_user_command USING p_ucomm LIKE sy-ucomm.
CASE p_ucomm.
WHEN ‘M_EXP'.
PERFORM export_to_excel TABLES it_main.
WHEN ‘CANCEL’ OR ‘BACK’ OR ‘EXIT'.
LEAVE TO SCREEN 0.
ENDCASE.
ENDFORM.
[/codesyntax]

TJ02 table contains the list of system status and description. All statuses in this table are internal. This means they are consistent across objects and clients. A single object can have multiple active system statuses and user statuses & inactive ones.

TJ30 table contains the list of user status and TJ30T contains their description.

You could use function module STATUS_READ read active object status and STATUS_OBJECT_READ to retrieve the status profile of an object number.

user to determine how much long will he wait until the program finish its processing.

This is done by simply calling the function module SAPGUI_PROGRESS_INDICATOR.

[codesyntax lang="abap" lines="no" title="CODE #1"]
CALL FUNCTION ‘SAPGUI_PROGRESS_INDICATOR’
EXPORTING
VALUE(PERCENTAGE) DEFAULT 0
VALUE(TEXT) DEFAULT SPACE
[/codesyntax]

PERCENTAGE is where you indicate the percentage of processing time and the TEXT is

where you indicate the text to be displayed on the status bar. This parameters can be

set with static values. But if you want, you could also add a few line of codes to make your

progress indicator dynamic and based on the actual number of records being process. This tip

is applicable when you are querying and processing a record from a database.

First you have to declare three decimal variables, see example below.

[codesyntax lang="abap" lines="no" title="CODE #2"]
DATA: v_percent TYPE p DECIMALS 4, “holds the actual percentage of process time
v_increment TYPE p DECIMALS 4, “holds the increment value per single loop
v_mod TYPE p DECIMALS 4. “used as indicator
[/codesyntax]

Now refer to the lines below for the rest of the codes.

[codesyntax lang="abap" lines="no" title="CODE #2"]
****Your select statement goes here******

* this will determine the increment value based on the result of the select statement
v_increment = 100 / sy-dbcnt.

LOOP AT it INTO wa.
*calculate the progress percentage on every single loop
v_percent = v_percent + v_increment.

*this codes indicates that I want to update my progress indicator every 5% increase
*in percentage. you can change this anytime you want.
v_mod = v_percent MOD 5.
IF v_mod < 1.
CALL FUNCTION 'SAPGUI_PROGRESS_INDICATOR'
EXPORTING
percentage = v_percent
text = 'Processing, please wait.'.
ENDIF.
[/codesyntax]

First Thing to do is to specify a field in our internal table that we will use to hold the Icon(refer to code #1).

[codesyntax lang="abap" lines="no" title="CODE #1"]
TYPES: BEGIN OF t_alvbutton,
icon TYPE string, “icon field
kunnr LIKE kna1-kunnr,
name1 LIKE kna1-name1,
END OF t_alvbutton.

DATA: it_alvbutton TYPE STANDARD TABLE OF t_alvbutton,
wa_alvbutton TYPE t_alvbutton.
[/codesyntax]

Proceed to the data retrieval and populate the it_alvbutton. I assume you know how to retrieve data from database so there’s no need to show you the select statement for our example. After that, loop on every records of it_alvbutton to specify the Icon that we want to display(refer to code #2).

[codesyntax lang="abap" lines="no" title="CODE #2"]
LOOP AT it_alvbutton INTO wa_alvbutton.
wa_alvbutton-icon = ‘@0X@’.
MODIFY it_alvbutton FROM wa_alvbutton.
ENDLOOP.
[/codesyntax]

@0X@ is the code for print icon. For the complete list of icons, check it out here.

Now the important part is to define a field in ALV that will hold the icon. To show you how simple it is to do that, please refer to code #3.

[codesyntax lang="abap" lines="no" title="CODE #3" escaped="true"]
DATA: ls_fieldcat TYPE slis_fieldcat_alv,
lt_fieldcat TYPE slis_t_fieldcat_alv.

DEFINE m_fieldcat.
add 1 to ls_fieldcat-col_pos.
ls_fieldcat-fieldname = &1.
ls_fieldcat-seltext_l = &2.
ls_fieldcat-outputlen = &3.
ls_fieldcat-hotspot = &4. “X to declare the field as a hotspot
ls_fieldcat-icon = &5. “X to declare the field as an icon
append ls_fieldcat to lt_fieldcat.
END-OF-DEFINITION.

m_fieldcat 'ICON' 'Print' '20' 'X' 'X'. “this specific field is a hotspot and an icon
m_fieldcat 'KUNNR' 'Customer No.' '10'.
m_fieldcat 'NAME1' 'Customer Name' '35'.
m_fieldcat . . .
m_fieldcat . . .

CALL FUNCTION ‘REUSE_ALV_GRID_DISPLAY’
. . .
. . .
[/codesyntax]

The figure below shows an example of print icon as a button.

Now refer to code #4 to handle the command when a user clicks on the icon button.

[codesyntax lang="abap" lines="no" title="CODE #4" escaped="true"]
FORM f_user_command USING ucomm LIKE sy-ucomm
v_selfld TYPE slis_selfield.

IF ucomm = '&IC1' AND v_selfld-fieldname = 'ICON'.
“code goes in here when user clicks on our print button
ENDIF.
[/codesyntax]

[codesyntax lang="abap" lines="no" title="CODE #1" container="div"]
TABLES: icon.
DATA: icontext(4) TYPE c.

SELECT * FROM icon.
WRITE: / icon-id+1(2).
CONCATENATE ‘@’ icon-id+1(2) ‘@’ INTO icontext.
WRITE: 10 icontext AS ICON, icon-name.
ENDSELECT.
[/codesyntax]

Create a blank program on transaction SE38 and add the code above. Just activate it and execute. You now have your own list of icons for your reference whenever you need it.

Lock Objects enables the user to request a lock on a specific record before accessing it. In this way, changing/editing of records is only possible one at a time, thus avoiding data inconsistency.

There are three different lock modes:

exclusive lock/Write Lock (Mode ‘E’)
allow you to prevent data from being changed while you are changing it yourself. An exclusive lock, as its name suggests, locks an application object for exclusive use by the program that sets it. No other program can then set either a shared lock or an exclusive lock for the same application object.

Shared Lock/Read Lock (Mode ‘S’)
allow you to prevent data from being changed while you are reading it. They prevent other programs from setting an exclusive lock (write lock) to change the object. It does not, however, prevent other programs from setting further read locks.

Enhanced write lock (Mode ‘X’)
works like a write lock but are not accumulated while a program is being executed. It protects from further accesses within the same transaction.

To create a Lock Object, got to transaction SE11, click on Lock Object radio button and enter any name that starts with EZ or EY. (Example EZSAMPLE_LOCK)

When you activate a lock object, the system generates an ENQUEUE_ and a DEQUEUE_ function module that you can use on your ABAP programs.

ENQUEUE_<lockobject name> - adds the requested object in a queue(lock)
DEQUEUE_<lockobject name> - remove the requested object from being queued(unlock).

The basic procedure on requesting a lock:
1. Enqueue and lock the object for editing.
2. Read/write the data from the database.
4. dequeue and release the object.

To implement Lock Objects in ABAP programs, please refer to this post.