There is no way around the fact that errors occur in programs. However, they manifest themselves in different ways. When a user starts a faulty application, it may crash, something unexpected may happen, or nothing at all may happen. From the user's point of view, at the user interface level, it is impossible to say just how and why this error occurred.
As a developer, you need to examine the program more closely, line-by-line, to establish just what statements and combinations of values in the different program variables caused the error. This is where the Debugger comes in.
The Debugger in the ADT is an important diagnostic tool that you can use to analyze an ABAP application.
With the Debugger, you can determine why a program is not working correctly by stepping inside the program at runtime. This allows you to see the statements being executed and the changing value of variable values as the program proceeds.
To use the Debugger, you first decide where to start the Debug process. One way is to set breakpoints in the source code, run your program, and stop at that set breakpoint.
Some of the features in the Debugger that are available are as follows:
Features of the ABAP Development Tools (ADT) Debugger
Feature | ADT Debugger |
---|---|
Setting Breakpoints | Yes |
Watchpoints | Yes (Depending on release) |
Conditional breakpoints | Yes |
Stepping through code | Yes |
Displaying variable values | Yes |
Debug an ABAP Program using ABAP Development Tools (ADT)
When you debug an ABAP Program using ADT, you use the Debug perspective. This is a customized version of the standard Eclipse Debug perspective, and it contains views and functions that are particularly important for debugging.

Some important elements of the debugger perspective are as follows:
- Source Code View
The Source Code view is the central part of the debugger perspective. It displays the source code and highlights the current position in the program.
- Variables View
The Variables view is also very important. You use this view to display the current values of variables of variables.
- Breakpoints View
The Breakpoints view is displayed next to the Variables view (not selected in the preceding figure, Debug Perspective). You use this view to display, delete, or create breakpoints. Breakpoints are points in the program at which normal processing is interrupted, and the system shows you the Debugger so that you can analyze the program's state at exactly that moment.
- Navigation Functions
While debugging a program, you use the navigation functions to control the execution of the code.
- Debug View
The Debug view on the upper left shows the debugging session and the call hierarchy. You will need this later when you debug calls of modularization units, for example, methods.
- Perspective Selector
You can switch back to the ABAP perspective with the Perspective Selector buttons in the upper right corner.