Wednesday, March 8, 2023

What are types of ABAP development packages?

Development package serves for purposes of structuring ABAP development objects into logical units.  In addition to organizing of the ABAP objects while the development packages can be organized in other packages it enables SAP software logistics to function.

Organizing of packages within other packages is enabled by the type of the development package. There are following three types (as per domain MAINPACK):

'S' - Structure packages

'X' - Main packages

'' - Development packages

 

A purpose of the structure packages is to act as top level container in the package hierarchy that defines architecture of the objects within the subordinate packages. This type of the package does not contain any development objects itself. Instead, they can contain package interfaces and subpackages.

A purpose of the main packages can be seen as group of semantically similar objects. As well as the structure packages the main one do not contain any development objects itself as well.

Development package groups development objects itself as per their types (e.g. domains, data elements, programs, includes, classes, etc.)

Main packages, with the exception of your own package interfaces and subpackages, cannot contain other repository objects. Subpackages, in turn, can be other main packages and the standard development packages.

Package are being created in t-code SE21 Package Builder. All the packages are stored in table TDEVC.

 

What development packages can be seen in the SAP NetWeaver/ABAP Platform based systems?

$TMP – Local or temporary objects, most visible one. All objects that are not needed to be transported into other system go in here.

Z* or Y* – custom development packages. All objects created by customer are stored in those packages.

$HV – Generated Help View Program

$MC – Generated Matchcode Programs/Functions

$ENQ – Generated ENQUEUE Function Modules

$GEN – Other generated objects

$SWF_RUN_CNT – Workflow Container: Generated Data Types

$EQ_GEN – Stores BW Easy Query generated objects. The package is created automatically upon first easy query generation. It includes all generated BW Easy Query objects such as the function modules.

 

More information:

ABAP Packages

SAP glossary

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