What is the MDM ABAP API?
Historically most ERP based master data resides in existing ABAP Systems. Also the majority of the business logic in that is consuming the master data also resides in ABAP based systems. Therefore it makes sense to extend the accessiblity of SAP NetWeaver MDM to allow for easy accessiblity from ABAP.
That is the goal of the MDM ABAP API (MDM4A). MDM4A takes the same read, modify, search, and Administrative functionalities of the established COM and Java APIs (MDM4J) and brings them to the ABAP World.
By using MDM4A, ABAP developers do not have to learn the SAP NetWeaver MDM specific data types. MDM4A does the job of mapping all the data types and structures for the developer. It translates the structures such as data arrays into ABAP constructs like Internal Tables.
MDM also takes a different approach to passing language specific data. It might be important to note that all the data is passed through MDM4A via Unicode (UTF-8) regardless of the settings in the AS-ABAP system (Unicode vs. Non-Unicode). The MDM4A layers also do all the work of translating this data into the code page of the current system. Even on Unicode systems, a translation from UTF-8 to UTF-16 must occur.
