Using Developer In-App Extensibility in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition

ABAP is an acronym for Advanced Business Application Programming, which is the language SAP developed for the SAP NetWeaver Application Server, where the SAP S/4HANA Cloud business suite software lives. If the implementation team cannot find a way to address a customer's requirement through the key user in-app extensibility tools, developer extensibility provides more customization opportunities in the development tenant of the development system.

In the development tenant, ABAP developers can use the SAP S/4HANA Cloud ABAP Environment to create advanced cloud-ready and upgrade-stable custom ABAP code for SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition. This combines the benefits of custom ABAP code, with the required restrictions for cloud-readiness, and the SAP S/4HANA programming model to build SAP Fiori apps.

Developer extensions are exported from the development tenant of the development system with the Transport Organizer from the ABAP Development Tools (ADT). Extensions are imported in the test system for verification with the Import Collection app, and forwarded to the production system where they are again imported with the Import Collection app, this time for productive use.

When working in the SAP S/4HANA Cloud ABAP Environment, developers should use only released SAP APIs, Business Add-Ins (BAdIs), and objects in their custom code, and predefined extension points. Because there is no default security when a developer creates their own database tables, customers cannot use ILM (Information Lifecycle Management) or IRF (Information Retrieval Framework) with ABAP extensions. Thorough testing of extensions must be completed to ensure users who should have access to data do, and those who shouldn't have access to data are restricted.

Learn more about developing in the ABAP Environment in the SAP Help Portal.