ABAP – Business Add-Ins

   In some cases, special functions need to be predefined in a software application to enhance the functionality of various applications. There are many Microsoft Excel add-ins to improve the functionality of MS Excel. Similarly, SAP facilitates some predefined functions by providing Business Add-Ins known as BADIs.

A BADI is an enhancement technique that facilitates a SAP programmer, a user, or a specific industry to add some additional code to the existing program in SAP system. We can use standard or customized logic to improve the SAP system. A BADI must first be defined and then implemented to enhance SAP application. While defining a BADI, an interface is created. BADI is implemented by this interface, which in turn is implemented by one or more adaptor classes.

The BADI technique is different from other enhancement techniques in two ways:

 Enhancement technique can be implemented only once.

 This enhancement technique can be used by many customers simultaneously.

You can also create filter BADIs, which means BADIs are defined on the basis of filtered data that is not possible with enhancement techniques. The concept of BADIs has been redefined in SAP Release 7.0 with the following goals:

 Enhancing the standard applications in a SAP system by adding two new elements in the ABAP language, that is ‘GET BADI’ and ‘CALL BADI’.

 Offering more flexibility features such as contexts and filters for the enhancement of standard applications in a SAP system.

When a BADI is created, it contains an interface and other additional components, such as function codes for menu enhancements and screen enhancements. A BADI creation allows customers to include their own enhancements in the standard SAP application. The enhancement, interface, and generated classes are located in an appropriate application development namespace.

Hence, a BADI can be considered as an enhancement technique that uses ABAP objects to create ‘predefined points’ in the SAP components. These predefined points are then implemented by individual industry solutions, country variants, partners and customers to suit their specific requirements. SAP actually introduced the BADI enhancement technique with the Release 4.6A, and the technique has been re-implemented again in the Release 7.0.