To begin, we must keep in mind every SAP implementation is different. That is because every business is different in the details related to their individual business processes and/or master data. Even with in the same company or entity, there can be slight or major differences in a business process or master data based on an enterprise slice. Some parts of the organization perform business one way, while another performs business another. While this is a challenge during implementations, SAP has delivered many different enhancement options. These may be leveraged by the design and development teams to meet the needs of the organization. Enhancement options are always preferable to core modifications when possible.
Enhancing The SAP System
To begin, we must keep in mind every SAP implementation is different. That is because every business is different in the details related to their individual business processes and/or master data. Even with in the same company or entity, there can be slight or major differences in a business process or master data based on an enterprise slice. Some parts of the organization perform business one way, while another performs business another. While this is a challenge during implementations, SAP has delivered many different enhancement options. These may be leveraged by the design and development teams to meet the needs of the organization. Enhancement options are always preferable to core modifications when possible.
No matter if you create an enhancement point or a BAdI as an enhancement option provider, or if you implement an existing enhancement option (be it implicit or explicit), what you create must fit into the structure of the Enhancement Framework in a way that enables you to collect and organize the enhancement options and their counterparts on the implementation side.
In addition to the new kernel-based BAdI, there are many other types of enhancement options that are part of the new Enhancement Framework. You implement these enhancements using the Enhancement Framework tools, which are integrated into the ABAP Workbench
In all the aspects, enhancements are more powerful than modifications, even given all the modification support that transaction SPAU offers. The reason is due to an important difference between an enhancement and a modification that stems from the conceptual difference between the two technologies.
In contrast to enhancements in the Enhancement Framework, modifications are physically part of the object they modify. This means that every single modification gets lost in an upgrade and needs to be re-inserted even in cases where the underlying SAP object has not changed at all!
SAP NetWeaver 7.0 (formerly 2004s) offers the new Enhancement Framework that not only is intended to unify the modification and classic enhancement techniques, but also offers you almost the same flexibility as modifications without the limitations of modifications.