Finally Paid Off! - My SAP ABAP Certification

Already a week has passed in passing my certification in SAP ABAP before I received my hard copy certificate and this is how it looks like:

It took me at least 2 months of reviewing and learning other topics which I did not encounter in my job.

I took the SAP ABAP Certification in Makati office of SAP Philippines in Citibank Tower in April of 2013. I felt nervous, excited and worried that day. I can not help myself but my head keep throbbing and it was very unfortunate time as my father had been rushed to hospital  few days before the examination. Prior to the examination month, I had already prepared myself by reviewing various TAW ebooks - thanks to my colleagues in HP (Hewlett-Packard) who shared me their copies of the reviewers.

Every night, I took at least two  to three hours of reviewing the TAW ebooks one or two topic each day. I started with the first part of the TAW which is the Netweaver Architecture followed by Memories and Data Dictionaries. I had also spent a lot of time in learning the concept of ABAP Object Oriented Concept. I had also filed a vacation leave on the week of exam and I was spending my time reviewing in McDonald branch or Coffee Bean morning or afternoon while enjoying a cup of coffee with cupcake of course.

Value and Check Table

Value and Check tables are both transparent tables and differs only on the context in where they are being used. An SAP table being used in a domain is called value table and it can be found in the value range tab as shown below:

In an ALV grid, if you want to create a drill down help popup window or F4 function, you may either choose Single Values (limited to 10 characters), Intervals, or Value table. In choosing Value table, you need first to create you transparent table, usually contains columns for the value you want to display in your ALV and the description of that particular value, and populate your records or entries as shown below:

Typically, in ALV F4 function, the popup window being shown will contain the Single values unless you made your transparent table as the check table of your ALV table as shown below:





So, the question is, how this value table becomes a check table. The answer is simply making the component or the field of the table above as foreign key by clicking the button that looks like a key:





Below is the window to make the table as check table and you may also add the columns in the F4 popup by making it as primary key.





In my case, MANDT, ACTION, and DESCR fields are the primary keys. Therefore, if the user clicks the drill down or F4 button, the below window should appear:



NOTE: Check table is used to validate the data being inputted - foreign key table level. Value table will contain the data for check table - domain level. Search help should contain the values of the table specified on the parameters. Therefore, if there are check table and search help, search help's table values will be shown and check table will be used as look up for the value being inputted in either selection screen or alv grid cell.

Until next time!

Have a great day!

Important ABAP Questions Usually Missed Out!

Hi folks! Below are some of the questions that I encountered during my interviews. It is very hard to face the interviewer if you do not know how to answer those questions as they appear as basic. So, what I did, was to write down what I have remembered and add them on this list.

NOTE: Don't forget to memorize all the important FMs used in ABAP development.

1. What is needed to add a custom field to a standard table. -custom includes staring in CI or append structure button

2. What is the type needed for a table field to accept a negative and positive symbol and what are the steps.
- The data type of integers, i, has a value range of -2147483648 to +2147483647 and contains integers only. You can specify integers as numeric literals directly in the program.

3. Difference between a BAPI and FM. - bapi is stored in bor, remote enabled, pre-defined standard processes from SAP while standard FM is the opposite.
sample BAPI - BAPI_FIXEDASSET_CREATE1

4. Difference between a BAPI and RFC. -BAPI in BOR and call standard sap process while RFC is the gateway to call a remote-enabled FM like BAPI.

5. The different kind of exits.
- menu exits
- screen exits
- FM exits
- field exits

6. Steps in creating a BADI
- you need to put a break point inside class ‘CL_EXITHANDLER’

CALL METHOD CL_EXITHANDLER=>GET_CLASS_NAME_BY_INTERFACE’ 

of method get_instance
SE19 you will create a new copy of badi method you have detected (starting in Z) or in oop concept you will redefine(polymorphism) it. Then, in SE18, there you will see the actual coding of the method you are copying. In there you can copy paste the FM being called by the standard method and put it on your redefined badi method.

**Advantage of BADI**

The main advantage of this concept is the capacity for reuse. Once implemented, a Business Add-In

can be reimplemented by other links in the software chain**TAW10

7. Difference between a BADI and user exits.
- badi is more of OOP while user exits are the usual abap exit using FMs.

8. How to convert Smartforms/Sapscript to PDF
- get the otf file
- convert the otf file to pdf by using a certain FM
- then call an FM to download the file

9. How to format a currency using WRITE in classic list.
set country 'US' or character. If 'US' or any character the represents it is blank, then it will used what it is defined in master record or sap sytem config, otherwise it will search the one in t005x table.
set currency will override set country

10. Difference between layout and fieldcat setup in ALV.
-layout, will affect the whole alv functionality
- fieldcat for each specific field

11. How to read file and what is the FM used.

12. Difference between a GUI download and OPEN Dataset FMs.

GUI_DOWNLOAD - download file to local/presentation server, while OPEN Dataset from applicaiton server.

Running ABAP Program in batch mode is capable only of handling file from application server thus the abap statement below are the only means for you to handle data transfer running in batch mode:

OPEN DATASET
CLOSE DATASET
DELETE DATASET
READ DATASET
TRANSFER

13. What are the sample BAPIs.
- BAPI_fixedasset_create1

14. Define field-symbols.
- placeholder to a certain variable. they do not reserve space but pointing the variable value to it after referencing.

15. Logical DB advantage and disadvantage.
Advantage: Centralized authorization check, Own pre-defined selection screen, Faster retrieval of data through its hierarchal design
Event of logical DB is get. It invokes the pull event handler in LDB program (created in SE36)
Event get late - is performed after all the tables in the lower part of the hierarchy have been processed

16. How to create text fields.

17. How to create a text table - Create ID table then the Text Table by linking their keys by making it foreign.

18. What are the implications of mandt - client dependecy such that if not included in a table, data is visible across boxes/clients.
- usually not including mandt is used in SAP system tables wherein that table data will be used accross clients

19. Ways to add data to a database tabale
- modify, will update the data, if not found it will insert the data
- update - it will only update existing data otherwise error
- insert - add the new record which is not existing, otherwise error

20. Ways to add data to abap internal table
-
21. Types of SAP Dialog events
-  Process Before Output (PBO) - triggered before screen is displayed
- Process After Input (PAI) - triggered after the screen is displayed
- Process On-Help Request (POH) - F1
- Process On-Value Request (POV) - F4
----------------------ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS--------------------

22. Types of ABAP tables:
- Index tables and hashed table
- Index tables are standard table and sorted table
- Hashed table is only hashed table
- Standard table can be accessed by using an index or key
- Sort table can be accessed using an index or key and sorted in ascending order by default

23. ALE, EDI, IDOC
- ALE- Application link Enabling, enables linking between two systems
- 3 Layers of ALE are Application layer, Distribution layer, and Communication layer
   - Application layer - refers to the applicaiton data such as SD, MM, FI, HR etc
   - Distribution layer - wherein data is determined to whom it will be distributed and formatted
   - communication layer - this is where the transfer of data takes place through RFC, TCP etc

- EDI is a translator of IDOC data. Usually it is a third party component.
  - it is comprised of outbound and inbound process

IDOC - is a transporter of the data being passed to ALE. te data being hold is arranged in a structured format.

24. How SAP table handles uppercase/lowercase queries? 
 - this can be done in domain level. By default, the domain data type will convert any characters to uppercase unless the it is selected in the domain lowercase tick box.

25. SAP Memory types
 - ABAP Memory -> can be accessed by the programs within internal session using import and export parameters
 - SAP Memory -> can be accessed by different programs across external sessions using GET/SET(GPA/SPA) Parameters

TAW review season 1

Hello Guys, hope you are doing well this coming holiday season.

I would like to let you know that I will be posting some topic with regards to TAW reviewer in this coming days. TAW reviewer helped me a lot in passing my ABAP certification as well as helps me in my day to day ABAP job.

If you have any suggestions or topic that want to discuss I would be happy to cover them up!

Until next time. Please don't forget to check out my posts soon.

Happy Holidays everyone!

(For a complete copy of TAW reviewers, please email me at awesome_nope@yahoo.com)

Translating your SAP text

Have you ever encountered language translation problem or any SAP related problem with regards to language? In this topic, we are going to address that issue of yours. Just follow the below simple steps:

1. In your ABAP editor or any editor that you are currently on as long as it has a toolbar above and you can find this path:

 GOTO-> TRANSLATION.

then put the corresponding language you may want to translate. On the example below we are going to translate german to english:



then locate the program by double clicking it then you will see the text that you might need to translate in order to show in your SAP application when you run:



In our case, we will double click FBAS row then just change the text that you may want to translate then SAVE!



And that's it!