Many times a need arises for SAP Users and Functional Consultants to generate quick reports without getting any ABAP coding done – time taken to complete the coding in development, transport and test it in QA system and then transport to production – is sometimes too long. In such cases, ABAP/4 query is a tool provided by SAP for generating these kind of reports.

Type of Report Desired:
Before starting to write an ABAP query, its advisable to decide the type of report that the user wants. ABAP query provides the following type of reports:

  Basic List        Simple report 
  Statistics          Report containing statistical functions like Average &Percentage 
  Ranked List     Report written for analytical purpose 

The output is always seen in the order of Basic List, then Statistics and then Ranked List if any. One ABAP query can have one basic list, maximum of 9 statistics and maximum of 9 ranked lists. 

In a nutshell, an ABAP/4 query can be designed in four steps
- Creation of a user group 
- Creation of functional area 
- Assignment of user group to functional area 
- Creation of the query based on functional area 

The various objects that form an ABAP query can be created in the following 2 ways:
- Tools => ABAP/4 Workbench => Utilities => ABAP/4 Query

  OR

- By executing the transaction codes mentioned below:

 SQ01   ABAP/4 Query 
 SQ02   Functional Area 
 SQ03   User group 

Step I - Create Functional Area
In the functional area section, the user indicates from which part of the SAP database the data is going to be retrieved and how the data is to be retrieved by the query. One functional area can be assigned to many user groups. A functional area can be created with or without a logical database.  To create a functional area with a logical database, one has to mention the name of the database and then select the fields from the tables that form the logical database.
   
ABAP Query Authorizations:  To use an ABAP query, the user must have appropriate authorizations. Two ways of providing authorizations to the users are as follows:

- User groups
The user should be a part of at least one user group to run the corresponding ABAP query. This automatically restricts the access of the user to specific functional areas, and thus the corresponding underlying logical databases.

- Authorizations
The authorization object S_QUERY should be used to give proper authorizations to the user for a query. This authorization object has a field named ACTVT which can take values 02 for Change, 23 for Maintain and 67 for Translate.

This value determines whether the user can create and modify the query. The possible authorizations in the object are as follows: 

  S_QUERY_ALL          Change, maintain and translate query 
  S_QUERY_UPD         Change and Translate 

Though the general concept of an ABAP query is moderately difficult, the results and the long term use of the ABAP query is worth the effort.

Tips by : Usha Kiran

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