Why do we need to debug?

We write programs to achieve certain functionality and like other actions, we make mistakes while writing the code. If they are not trapped at the right time, problem becomes bigger, and bigger and bigger.

Mistakes can be syntactical or logical.

Syntactical errors are trapped during syntax check in code editor. Program does not get compiled and activated till they are removed. Existences of logical errors are not understood till we get a difference in outputs. It can reside anywhere in flow logic and can get activated when the proper condition is fired.

ABAP Debugger

ABAP Debugger helps to get rid of logical mistakes by trapping the field values at different stages in program flow. ABAP Debugger is the efficient means of identifying errors in ABAP programs. Programs can be stopped at a particular statement, event, subroutine, and function module or system exceptions. Field contents can be displayed or changed at runtime.

 

Overview of the ABAP Debugger Screen:

Fields: It will show the value of single Fields value of the object

Tables: It will show the value of the internal table

Break points: It will show all the break points in the program

Watch Points: It will display all the watch points in the program.

Calls: It will show name of the program their respective events and the processing block.

Overview: It will give the overview of the program. i.e. Name of the Program their processing block and what type of is the block.

Settings: From Settings one can trace whether the program is running on the Update task Memory Monitoring update debugging and other features.

Other features of Debugger screen:

1)      It will increase the visible area of the program in the debugger mode. The program will show in the whole screen instead of the half screen.

2)      It will display the current line where the program is executing.

3)      All the four buttons are respectively executing the program in each different steps i.e. F5, F6, F7, F8 etc.

4)      SY-SUBRC/SY-TABIX/SY-DBCNT: These fields will show the different value of sy-subrc,

5)      sy-tabix and sy-dbcnt at the different stage of the program.

6)      Delete Icon: This icon will delete all the items in the field names

7)      Line Number: It will show the different Line Number of the Program

8)      Main program: One can find the name of program, which is currently executing.

9)   Watch-point: From that Icon itself it will create the watch-point in the screen.