SAP ABAP HR- An Integral Part of SAP ABAP

SAP abbreviated as ‘Systems, Applications and Products in data processing’, is a German multinational company which develops and markets enterprise software solutions which caters to different business processes. It helps the organizations to handle their business operations as well as maintain healthy customer relations. SAP SE offers a whole set of software suites which are designed exclusively to address numerous business requirements. It is equipped in such a way that it can provide end-to-end software solutions for business needs like financial, manufacturing, logistics, distribution and so on. A unified SAP system runs all these processes.

Some of the SAP functional modules are FICO, MM, PP, SD and HR.  Technical modules of SAP include ABAP, XI, Net Viewer, Basis and BIW.

Overview SAP ABAP

ABAP which is abbreviated as Advanced Business Application Programming, is a high-level programming language developed by SAP. ABAP is used for programming the SAP Application Server and is a part of NetWeaver platform used to build business applications. ABAP also supports Java. ABAP is one of the important 4GLs (Fourth Generation Languages) which is application-specific. ABAP was one among the first languages which included the concepts of Logical Databases (LDBs). LDBs offer a high level of abstraction starting from the basic DB levels.

ABAP Runtime Environment

SAP customers can use ABAP programming to develop custom reports and interfaces. ABAP has an abstraction between business applications, OS and the DB. With this feature, applications can be easily ported from one OS to another i.e. apps do not depend directly upon a particular server or DB platform. All the ABAP programs reside inside the SAP DB and the code is in two forms: Source code and generated code. Source code can be viewed and edited using ABAP Workbench Tools. All the ABAP programs get executed with the help of runtime system which is an integral part of SAP kernel. ABAP runtime system takes care of processing ABAP statements, responding to events and controlling the flow logic of screens.

Database interface is the key component of ABAP runtime system. It converts the database independent Open SQL statements into Native SQL statements.

ABAP Software Components

Some of the software components of ABAP are listed below:

• SAP_BASIS a technical base layer


• SAP_ABA contains features which is needed for all sorts of business applications say business partner or address management


• SAP_UI offers functionality to develop SAP UI5 applications.


• BBPCRM is a business application and to be specific, a CRM application

ABAP features its executable programs in two fashions:

• Reports- They follow a simple programming model, relatively.


• Module pools- They define much more complex patterns of UI by using a collection of screens.

Development Environment

ABAP offers three different ways to develop and below mentioned are those features:

1. ABAP Workbench

This module is accessed via SAP GUI and it contains different tools to edit programs.

2. ABAP Development Tools

This module consists of a set of plugins for Eclipse platform. Installing these tools on local machine, ABAP developer can work locally. However a continuous synchronization with the backend is done by the system.

3. SAP Web IDE

This module is a browser based dev environment used in ABAP development processes. SAP Web IDE may be installed on the ABAP system and the developer can use a web browser to access the same.

SAP ABAP HR

SAP ABAP HR forms an integral part of ABAP. The following set of operations is performed exclusively using this tool.

• Table development


• Data Processing 


• Report developing 


• Screens development/enhancement 


• Database update 


• BAPIs /RFC s


• Function Building 


• Scripts and smart forms. 


• Java connectors etc.

All these actions can be performed by the ABAP programming builder using the ABAP 4GL. This can be related to other SAP modules say HR, FICO.SD, CRM, MM and so on.

SAP ABAP HR intends to develop ABAP in the area of HR. Its main objective is to meet the client requirement based on the functional specs and user stories.