Debugging An SAP ABAP Program

This is a guest article is by Plamen Velkov, who is taking my Beginners Guide To SAP ABAP programming course. This is part 4 of his course review / journey.

Debugging

I don’t know why but debugging code is always something beginners like me pay no attention to. It was the same with me when I started programming with C some years ago. Then a friend of mine made me understand how helpful the debugger is while he helped me with a project for the university. I don’t remember exactly, but I think I was struggling with a recursive function with pointers which simply didn’t work. I spent a couple of days staring at the code and wondering where I went wrong and my friend solved the issue in only 10 minutes using the debugger.

We recently had a project in Java in the university and I went on to help a colleague with it. When he saw me using the Eclipse Debugger he was like

“Wow! Do you even use this?!”

When I managed to fix his code, that he made me explain how to use the debugger because as he said:

“That thing saves a hell of a lot of time!”

It’s also interesting that the first thing my manager showed me in ABAP was how she debugged a program with the ABAP Debugger.

The ABAP Debugger

I was really glad to see the course includes some videos on the Debugger. I did because I knew from the beginning that it would be an important tool since you work with databases with so many records.

ABAP Debugger

The ABAP Debugger has the regular things that every debugger has – BreakPoints, WatchPoints and etc. But also – it has some tools which could really be of help to you when you work on your programs. I really love the ability to monitor the system variables constantly.

The “Table” tab is also very handy when you deal with tables. The only thing that can annoying at some moments is the lack of space for the code – it can sometimes become so small, that you can read only 1 to 2 lines at a time. However, that’s not a serious problem – it’s just another excuse to convince your manager to get you a huge monitor 🙂

As for the interface – I prefer the classic one (that is used in the course) but I suppose the new interface has its own advantages. It seems more complicated and maybe that’s the reason why Mr. Moxon chose the classic one for educational purposes. I don’t know – when I become more experienced in ABAP and debugging especially I may come back and write a more extensive article about it.

A few words about the course module covering this topic.

The tutorials focused on the debugger are presented in such a way that everyone will easily understand. They cover the main tools and options as well as giving real example of the debugging process. The best thing is that Mr. Moxon uses the debugger later on in some of the other modules – this shows you how important and convenient the debugger is and helps you get used to it.

Plamen Velkov

For those looking for some more information of the ABAP debugger, checkout these 3 articles..

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About the Author:

Pete has been working with SAP technologies for over 10 years. He started out as an ABAP consultant and then moved on to BW where he has worked many different clients covering a wide variety of industries. "I love introducing SAP technology (especially BI) to new clients and showing them how they can go from zero to hero within their business in super fast time". Contact me on twitter @PeterMoxon