Refactoring ABAP transactional applications

It's a short example how to put a legacy transactional ABAP application under test and a challenge to refactor it.

Translation

• German

Use case

Filled boxes, which should be delivered to the customer, are managed in table zbox_delivery. Every box has a DIN-A5 label. If the content is moved from one box to another, the report zbox_rebooking updates the table zbox_delivery and prints new labels for the boxes.

Put it under test

To test the report zbox_rebooking, it was copied in the report zbox_rebooking_refactor and a few messages to interact with the ECATT testscript ZBOX_REBOOKING were added. The testscript ZBOX_REBOOKING should verify, the labels are correctly printed and the database is updated correctly. Snapshots from the SAP-spooljobs are created and compared with a little snapshot utility in class ZSPOOL_SNAPSHOTS.

Test preparation

Deactivate immediately print out in your user profile. You avoid unnecessary print outs.

Refactoring contest

The legacy code is quite messy with many anti-pattern. The following refactoring targets are defined in this challenge:

• tell, don't ask
• not only the contributors should know what is going on
• remove anit-pattern like DATA-declarations, that just seem to be local, in input or output modules
• think of descriptive names (ls_box1 or something like this isn't very descriptive)
• input modules should contain as less logic as possible
• the logic in report zbox_rebooking shouldn't be just accessed from the SAP-GUI. It should also be accessed within Web-Services or within RFC-programs.
• tests shouldn't break (Please note, that the tests in the script ZBOX_REBOOKING are incomplete and that you should add some more tests before starting the refactoring activities).

If you want to accept this challenge, please open a pull-request. You should use the report zbox_rebooking_refactor as a starting point.

Don't know how to start?

If you don't know how to start with refactoring, you can find some hints in the book Qualitätsmanagement in der ABAP-Entwicklung (german) or you can contact me for some hints on:

• johannes.gerbershagen@kabelmail.de
• jocder auf dem abapforum
• SCN

Dependencies

• ABAP DB preperator is needed.

Installation

Install via abapGit. SAP NetWeaver 7.40 or above is needed.