ABAP Cloud Part 4: ATC Readiness — Finding and Fixing Unreleased Usage

📌 KEY POINTS
✅ ATC (ABAP Test Cockpit) finds unreleased API usage and forbidden statements automatically.
✅ Use the cloud readiness / ABAP Cloud check variant defined in your system.
✅ Fix findings or document them with exemptions — never ignore them silently.
💡 Make ATC a quality gate at transport release so new violations cannot enter.

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▶ WHERE WE ARE
Part 3 showed how to replace dependencies. This part shows how to find them and keep new ones out.

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▶ 1. WHAT ATC CHECKS FOR ABAP CLOUD

• Use of SAP objects that are not released for the required contract (e.g. tables, FMs, classes).
• Statements not allowed in ABAP for Cloud Development (WRITE, SUBMIT, dynpro, native SQL, etc.).
• Obsolete or deprecated API usage (with successor hints).
• Additional quality checks configured in the variant (performance, security).

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▶ 2. CHECK VARIANTS
SAP delivers check variants for cloud development and readiness (for example variants named along the lines of ABAP_CLOUD_DEVELOPMENT_DEFAULT or ABAP_CLOUD_READINESS; availability depends on release). Your quality team usually defines a global default variant. Use:

• the readiness variant to assess existing Standard ABAP code,
• the cloud development variant for code that is already ABAP for Cloud Development.

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▶ 3. RUNNING ATC

• In ADT: right-click a package or object → Run As → ABAP Test Cockpit With… → choose the variant.
• Results appear in the ATC Problems view: priority, message, object, line, and often a quick fix or successor.
• For mass analysis: ATC runs over many packages scheduled by the quality team, with results in the ATC Result Browser.

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▶ 4. READING A FINDING
Example: "Use of object VBAK not permitted (not released)". Double-click to jump to the code; check the successor information; plan the replacement (Part 3).

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▶ 5. EXEMPTIONS
If a finding cannot be fixed now (e.g. tier 3 legacy code), request an exemption with a reason and validity. Exemptions are approved by the quality team and visible in reports — they are technical debt, not a solution.

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▶ 6. QUALITY GATES

• ATC check on transport release: blocks transports with priority 1/2 findings.
• CI pipelines (e.g. with abapGit/gCTS and ATC APIs) run ATC for every change.
• Dashboards track findings per package over time.

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▶ STEP BY STEP

1. Run ATC with the readiness variant on one custom package.
2. Export findings; group by dependency.
3. Fix the top five; re-run; compare counts.
4. Enable ATC checks on transport release for new packages.

✅ CHECKPOINT: you can measure cloud readiness and prevent regressions.

A company started an ABAP Cloud program with a readiness ATC run over 1,200 custom objects: 18,000 findings. The number looked hopeless until the team grouped them: 70% came from fewer than 40 dependencies (a handful of tables, a few FMs and WRITE statements).
They created a remediation list per dependency, enabled ATC as a transport gate for all new packages (so no new findings could appear), and reduced findings by half within two quarters. Exemptions were allowed only for tier 3 code with a documented sunset date.

• Running ATC once and never again.
• Using the wrong check variant for the code's language version.
• Fixing findings one by one instead of grouping by dependency.
• Granting exemptions without reason or end date.
• No transport gate, so new violations keep arriving.

• Define a default ATC variant for ABAP Cloud readiness.
• Group findings by dependency and fix the biggest groups first.
• Use ATC as a transport and CI quality gate.
• Treat exemptions as documented, time-limited debt.
• Track findings per package over time.

Questions: "How do you check ABAP Cloud readiness?", "What does ATC find?", "How do you keep new code clean?"
Strong answer: run ATC with the cloud readiness variant on Standard ABAP code and the cloud development variant on ABAP Cloud code; findings cover unreleased objects, forbidden statements and deprecated APIs with successors; group by dependency, remediate, use documented exemptions only for legacy tiers, and enforce ATC as a transport/CI gate.