SCN Content

One of your first stops after installing the ABAP 7.02 trial (or if you are looking for something to read during the installation process), should be the new functions and features page here on SCN. It does a nice job of summarizing the high level feature areas and give you an excellent starting point to perform further research.

There have also been several blogs released in the last week, all focused on the 7.02 ABAP topic and of the things you can try in 7.02 once you have the trial installed.

• ABAP Trial Version 7.02 available in SCN! by Horst Keller
• Web Version of ABAP Keyword Documentation by Horst Keller
• ABAP Feature Set Backport 7.X to 7.02 – Overview by Horst Keller
• Source Code-Based Class Builder by Snezhina Velcheva

All of these provide great starting points, particularly for learning new ABAP syntax or workbench capabilities.

Although not directly SCN hosted, it’s probably important to note that the 7.02 version of help.sap.com is now live. I personally find the New Features section of the online help useful when learning the delta features.  For example if you want an overview of the new functionality in Web Dynpro ABAP in 7.02, here is the link you should start with on help.sap.com.

TechEd 2010

TechEd was also a great source of information on the new features in ABAP 7.02.  Don’t forget that many of the sessions were recorded and can be viewed at any time. These sessions can be viewed here: http://www.virtualsapteched.com/

Particularly on the topic of new features you want to learn about in this trial, you might watch the replays of CD105 – What’s New in Web Dynpro ABAP 7.01 and 7.02 and CD203 – Best Practices for Designing Web Dynpro ABAP User Interface.

If you attended TechEd this year, you might have noticed that we didn’t give out the source code to the attendees for many of the usual workshops.  This was mostly because the source code was based upon NetWeaver 7.02 and without a trial edition at that release level yet, it wouldn’t do anyone much good.  Thankfully we now have the 7.02 trial, so we have started uploading some of the code to the SAP Code Exchange.

I have created a Code Exchange project to house transports that can be imported into the 7.02 to deliver some of the demos and exercises we used at TechEd: https://cw.sdn.sap.com/cw/groups/sap-teched-2010-abap-702-examples-and-demo

Currently I have uploaded the content from CD160 – Introduction to Web Dynpro ABAP, CD105 – What’s New in Web Dynpro ABAP 7.01 and 7.02, CD203 – Best Practices for Designing Web Dynpro ABAP User Interfaces, and CD266 – Update Your ABAP Development Skills to NetWeaver 7.0 and Beyond.

If you access the Code Exchange project and go to the Releases tab (after accepting the Terms of Usage), you will see individual download files. Each contains ABAP transport files for the various areas covered.  There is a file for all the CD266 Exercises and the CD160 exercises.  There are also transports for the various demos, such as the performance demos used in CD203 or the Flash Islands and Silverlight Islands demoed in CD105.

If you need any general advice on how to import transports into the trial edition ABAP AS, I would recommend this blog: http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/6380.  Its a little bit older now and focused on an early release level, but the overall process of performing transports is sound.

SAP Press Book

If you are interested in the 7.02 features for ABAP development, then (at the risk of some self promotion) I would also recommend the new SAP Press book – Next Generation ABAP Development 2nd Edition, which is scheduled to begin shipping in early January. This new edition of the book was extended and revised specifically to cover the new features in ABAP development in NetWeaver 7.01 and 7.02. For example, the syntax all throughout the book has been updated to include the new statement chaining and extended expressions possible in NetWeaver 7.02.  There are also completely new topics like Business Objects integration, BRF+, Page Builder, Islands, etc.

The book also comes with a CD that contains the source code of all the projects discussed in the book – source code that you can now actually install and run thanks to the recent release of the 7.02 trial edition.

UPDATED: For a limited time you can use discount code NEXTGENABAP to get a 10% discount on the book when you order from the SAP Press website.

Not all the budgets restrictions worked out as nicely. I really needed to cut a 1 hour lecture. We have been presenting the introduction to Web Dynpro ABAP since 2005 (or some form even before then). I remember going to this session when I was still at customer working at Kimball International. Therefore it became a prime target for our reduction efforts.

In past years we have conducted a 1 hour lecture and a 4 hour hands-on for the introduction to Web Dynpro ABAP. The slides and presentation material are the same between these two sessions and often attendees went to both. Last year I taught both the lecture and hands-on version. By the end of the week in Las Vegas after presenting the same basic material 4 times in as many days, I was pretty sick of hearing it. I would imagine people that attended both the lecture and hands-on sessions probably felt similar.

Therefore we made a decision to no longer offer the 1 hour lecture version. As many customers are still just experiencing Web Dynpro ABAP for the first time as their companies upgrade we want to support their efforts. The 4 hour hands-on will remain. It is session CD160 (Las Vegas / Berlin). We believe that the time spent hands-on with the development environment is one of the best ways to learn the tool.

We didn’t completely discard the lecture version of the materials, however. Instead we decided the best way to service those who wish to begin learning Web Dynpro ABAP is to provide these materials as eLearning Videos all the time (for free) on SDN and Enterprise Geeks. So now you can study these introductory materials any time you want. Then come to TechEd and enforce what you learned via a Hands-On session or built up to try one of the more advanced Web Dynpro ABAP sessions.