Organizing Work with Eclipse

Objectives

After completing this lesson, you will be able to:

  • Identify the ABAP Project properties to customize the ABAP perspective

The Eclipse Workbench

Workbench

The term Workbench refers to the desktop development environment in Eclipse. It is used to edit objects, manage views, and arrange the developer's work area.

Features of the workbench are as follows:

  • Each workbench contains one or more perspectives
  • Perspectives contain views and editors
  • More than one Workbench window can exist on the desktop at any given time, for example, you may open ABAP Development Tools, but also SAP HANA Studio at the same time

Perspectives

A perspective in Eclipse is a window in which you can perform a certain task. To develop ABAP applications, choose Window → Perspective → Open Perspective → Other, and double-click ABAP.

A perspective is made up of a set of views, which appear as tabs in the Eclipse window. Even though there are other views, the ones we want to focus on today are the most important ones.

  • Source code editor
  • Project explorer – ABAP Development Tools provide several perspectives for the Eclipse workbench: the ABAP perspective, the ABAP Profiling perspective, and the Debug perspective.

The most important of these is the ABAP perspective.

The ABAP perspective, like any other, provides an initial set of views and editors and determines their layout. Specifically, the ABAP views and editors allow you to work with ABAP development objects that are managed by an ABAP backend system. When you are using the ABAP perspective, you must establish a system connection, which is represented by a corresponding ABAP project. The ABAP perspective enables access to both Eclipse-based and SAP GUI-based ABAP tools.

The ABAP perspective consists of an editor area containing various ABAP source code editors, and the following views:

  • Project Explorer
  • Outline
  • Task Repositories
  • Task List
  • Problems
  • Templates
  • Properties
  • Feed Reader
  • Transport Organizer

Open a New Perspective and Customize the ABAP Perspective

Business Example

You are a programmer for an SAP customer and work with the new ABAP Development Tools. Your current task is to customize the ABAP perspective by adding ABAP Function Module to the New menu, and then to save the perspective as S4D100_##, where ## is the group number assigned to you by your instructor. You also want to remove, and then reinstate, the Help menu and the Launch toolbar from your new perspective.

Prerequisites

Steps

  1. Open the Debug perspective.

    1. Choose Window → Perspective → Open Perspective → Debug.

  2. Save the ABAP perspective as a new perspective, S4D100_##, where ## is your group number.

    1. Choose Window → Perspective → Save Perspective As... 

    2. In the Save Perspective As dialog box, enter S4D100_## as the name.

    3. Choose OK.

  3. Customize the ABAP perspective by adding Function Module to the New menu.

    1. Choose Window → Perspective → Customize Perspective ...

    2. Choose the Menu Visibility tab.

    3. Expand the File node.

    4. Expand the New node.

    5. Select ABAP Function Module.

    6. Choose OK.

      The ABAP Function Module has been added to the New menu in the ABAP perspective.

      Note

      Editors:

      Most perspectives in the Workbench comprise an editor area and one or more views.

      There are different editors for different ABAP development objects. The appropriate editor opens automatically when you open the object. If there is no associated native editor for an ABAP development object, the Workbench attempts to launch an external editor. For example, the Eclipse Workbench has no editor for ABAP Dictionary objects such as structures and tables. If you double-click an ABAP Dictionary object, the SAP GUI will be launched.

      Practice

      ExerciseStart Exercise

Log in to track your progress & complete quizzes