SAP / SAP Mid Level (3 to 8 yrs) Interview questions
What is the difference between a CDS View and a classical ABAP view?
A classical ABAP view (defined in transaction SE11) is a fairly limited database view
construct, typically supporting only simple inner joins between tables with restricted expressiveness. CDS
Views are far more capable: they support associations (lazy, reusable joins), calculated and derived fields,
annotations driving UI and OData behavior, extensibility, and a rich expression language.
| Classical ABAP View | CDS View |
| Limited to simple inner joins. | Rich associations, outer joins, unions, calculated fields. |
| No metadata for UI/OData generation. | Annotations drive Fiori UI rendering and OData service exposure directly. |
| Defined via SE11 UI. | Defined as code (DDL source), version-controllable like any ABAP object. |
For modern SAP development, CDS Views have essentially superseded classical ABAP views as the recommended way to define reusable, semantically-rich data models, particularly for anything that needs to be exposed via Fiori or OData.
More Related questions...
