SAP ABAP Object Orientation - SAP ABAP

What is object orientation in sap abap?

Object orientation is the type of software design in SAP ABAP which helps the user to make it easier to understand, maintain, and reuse. Object Oriented Programming (OOP) mainly emphasis on creative thinking in exploring software. The beauty of OOP lies in its simplicity. The behaviour of OOP makes it easier to deliver quality software components on time.

As OOPS mainly focuses on objects that determine abstract or concrete things of the real world. It means they are designed in terms of real world objects. In case of programmers and business analysts it made very easy to exchange ideas and information about a design which uses common domain language. Getting this information and ideas helps in identifying risks, revealing out the hidden requirements, and improves the quality in developing software. These objects are determined by their character and properties that are represented by their internal structure and their attributes (data). The behaviour of these objects is described by methods (i.e. functionality).

Let’s compare the procedural and object oriented programming −


Procedure Oriented approach

Object Oriented approach


Emphasis is on tasks.

Emphasis is on things that does those tasks.


Programs can be divided into smaller programs known as functions.


Data security

Most of the functions share global data.

Data can be hidden and can’t be accessed by external sources.




Unlike other programming languages which have procedural language like COBOL, ABAP was also first developed as a procedural language. But now it has inculcated the principles of object oriented paradigms with the introduction of ABAP Objects. These object-oriented concepts in ABAP such as class, object, inheritance, and polymorphism are similar to that of other modern object-oriented languages such as Java or C++.

As object orientation begins to implement, each class has specific role assignments. This division principle applies in simplifying overall programming model, which helps each class to specialize in solving a particular piece of the problem at hand. Such classes have high cohesion and the operations which are performed by each class are closely related in some intuitive way.

The key features of object orientation are −

  • Effective programming structure.
  • Real-world entities can be modeled very well.
  • Stress on data security and access.
  • Minimizes code redundancy.
  • Data abstraction and encapsulation.
