Change and Transport System - CTS

Imagine you have joined a project, you were given a technical specification/functional specification to develop a report.

If you were provided with functional specification, you will design technical specification. (Senior developers will design technical specification). If you are a junior ABAP developer then you will be directly provided with technical specification).

So you start writing report program in the ABAP editor after completing the technical design. (The technical design must be reviewed and accepted by your team leader before you start coding).

To name the report program, you should refer the naming standards document. Please refer my previous post for the information about essential documents in a project.

As per the naming standards, you will name your report program.

Now you have to SAVE your report program.

There are two options:

1) save to development class

2) save as local object

An object (here report) which is saved as local object can never be transported. The development class for local objects is $tmp.

If you are creating a test program, which you don’t want to transport into TEST system, then you can save your object as local object. But if you are creating a customer production program (that means which should go into Production system) you must assign it to a development class. When you try to save an object assigning it to a development class, you should create a new transport request or attach it to an existing change request.

(We will see how to create requests in the coming posts).

Remember, as a developer, you should always ask your team leader about the development class which you can use. The project may contain only one development class or it may contain more than one development class. Objects related to SD module can be saved to one development class, where as objects related to MM can be saved to another development class. It varies from project to project. As an ABAP developer, you will never create development class in real time,
We will see what a development class is in next post.

Now we will see how many types of change requests are there:

1) SAP IMG ( Implementation Guide)

The most important customizing tool is the Implementation Guide. (IMG). We can use the IMG to make all configurations possible in the SAP standard.

Any modifications we make in the SAP IMG (Implementation Guide) are known as customizing settings. Functional consultants use IMG to configure SAP according to the Client requirements.

2) ABAP workbench:

SAP provides ABAP workbench as a complete environment. The ABAP Workbench includes tools for defining data structures (ABAP Dictionary), developing ABAP programs (ABAP Editor) and designing interfaces (Screen Painter and Menu Painter), as well as many other functions.

Change and Transport system:

The CTS is the central tool for managing changes to Customizing and Repository data that you make in the IMG or ABAP Workbench. The CTS records all changes in change requests.

A change request can be a customizing request or workbench request. As developers we will be always creating workbench requests.