ABAP Objects and Upgrade

[bjorn-henrik_zink]

Hi,

I would like to discuss pro and cons of using ABAP Objects for custom development related to upgrades. For example, it seems to be an advantage to encapsulate standard functionality. Through encapsulation the calling programs do not have to care about whether or not the underlying functionality has been changed. Reuse makes it possible to adapt affected areas centrally without having to make changes in various places. However, I saw a thread in this forum regarding older ABAP Objects programming which was obsolete after an upgrade. Even if it seems good that obsolete statements are detected and can be exchanged, it is additional upgrade work which would have been avoided if the code had not been written in ABAP Objects.

Please share you pros and cons regarding this subject.

Thanks!

[former_member156446]

Refer to [this link>>|http://searchsap.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid21_gci996182,00.html]

[matt]

J@Y - it's a good link to an interesting discussion. But it's 5 years old... ABAP Objects has moved on since then. ( Also, (moderator hat on) please refrain from just posting links without at least giving an indication of what the links are about ).

To the original poster. I think it is VERY unlikely that statements that are allowed now in an OO environment will be disallowed in future. I've been working in Objects since 46C, and have been careful to observe the warnings, and also quick to adopt the new syntax and reject the obsolete (even before it became necessary). The only remedial work I've had to do in ten years, is on a few classes, where the constructor wasn't calling the super constructor. And that was easily identified and remedied.

My experience has been, in those last ten years, that properly written object oriented code leads to developments that are much easier and quicker to maintain - and therefore, a lot cheaper. And that's the bottom line.

matt

[bjorn-henrik_zink]

Thanks Matt, thats valuable information. Did you take part in an upgrade and face any advantages or disadvantages that were related to ABAP Objects?

[matt]

Only advantages. Any changes that needed to be done were able to be effected quickly. I disagree with the earlier poster about debugging being difficult. I simply do not find that so. And I do a lot of support work, not just implementation!

Simply, a well written Object Oriented program is better than a well written classical/procedural. It may take longer to develop, but it will be easier and quicker to maintain, resolve problems. Therefore cheaper. The vast majority of development costs rest not in implementation but in maintenance.

Regards

matt

[former_member376453]

I agree with Matt. But as a developer (Support), I feel really terrible when I do some debugging in any OO development. If your previous developer left some documentation then its fine, else you really have some problem. It takes lots of time, at the time of debugging. But for implementation, I will always prefer OOps.

Kuntal