Skip to content

ABAP Keyword Documentation →  ABAP Dictionary →  ABAP CDS in ABAP Dictionary →  ABAP CDS - Syntax 

ABAP CDS - General Syntax Rules

The general syntax rules for the DDL and the DCL in ABAP CDS are:

  • Keywords
  • Keywords must be all uppercase, all lowercase, or in lowercase with an uppercase initial letter. Mixed uppercase and lowercase is not allowed.
  • Names
  • Names are not case-sensitive.
  • A name can have a maximum of 30 characters.
  • A name can consist of letters, numbers, underscores (_), and slashes (/).
  • A name must start with a letter or a forward slash character.
  • The following CDS keywords cannot be used in names: ALL, AND, AS, ASSOCIATION, AVG, CASE, CAST, COUNT, DISTINCT, EXISTS, EXTEND, FROM, FULL, GROUP, HAVING, INNER, JOIN, KEY, LEFT, MAX, MIN, NOT, NULL, ON, OR, ORDER, RIGHT, SELECT, SUM, UNION, VIEW, WHEN, WHERE
  • Literals
  • Numeric literals must always be specified in full and a decimal point (.) used as a decimal separator if necessary.
  • Character literals are enclosed in single quotations marks (').
  • Comments
  • Two forward slashes (//) introduce a comment, which continues until the end of the line.
  • Comments within lines or that span multiple lines are enclosed by the characters /* and */.
  • Separators
  • Statements can be closed using a semicolon (;). This is optional.
  • Protected Words
  • Certain keywords are protected and cannot be used as self-defined names.

Other versions: 7.31 | 7.40 | 7.54

Examples

  • SELECT, select, and Select are valid ways are specifying a keyword. seLect and SeLect, on the other hand, produce syntax errors.

  • MYVIEW, myview, and myView all identify the same operand.

  • 0.5 is a valid numeric literal, but .5 is not.