ABAP Dictionary External Views for Overcoming ABAP CDS Views Limitations

This post I would like to share usage of ABAP Dictionary External Views in ABAP CDS views development to overcome some limitations.

Scenario 1

Imagine that we have S/4HANA system and HANA DB also used for other applications. In this case we usually have and use in HANA not only main schema of S/4HANA system. We use ABAP CDS views in S/4HANA for reporting reasons.

How to use data from REPZME schema in our ABAP CDS views? By default you could use only tables visible in ABAP Dictionary of T85 Application server and placed in SAPT85 schema.

Scenario 2

Imagine that we have S/4HANA system and using ABAP CDS views for reporting reasons. But some developers in your company are good at HANA Information Models development or already exist some Calculation Views with complex logic.

Do you need to rebuild them using ABAP CDS views or may be you could reuse it?

Solution

In this post I would like to show solution for Scenario 1 and Scenario 2.

From ABAP 7.4 SP02 it is possible to create Dictionary External Views for this reasons.

We would like to use table MARA from REPZME Schema in ABAP CDS views.

1.Go to HANA Studio Modeler Perspective, create in Content Area some package and Calculation VIew for table MARA. I just select 4 fields for demo purpose. In CV we could use tables not only from main SAPT85 Schema.

2. Go to HANA Studio ADT Perspective, create some ABAP Package and create new “Dictionary view”. Give it a name, description and select External View option and find our Calculation Views with Browse button.

3. Change DDIC fields type if needed and activate.

4. Go to ABAP Dictionary and check existence and look at data.

5. Go back to ADT Perspective and create ABAP CDS views Data definition based on External view ZT04_PROXY.

Result

We use in ABAP CDS views data from table not in visible by default in ABAP Dictionary or reuse in ABAP CDS views complex logic that was written in Calculation Views.