Created by James Hurrell on Apr 18, 2023

Summary: this section describes how to use the CAST SAP Extractor to extract data ready for analysis with CAST

Pre-requisites

Please ensure that the CAST SAP Extractor is already installed on your SAP instance, as described in CAST SAP Extractor NG - Installation and Uninstall - 8.4.x.

Preamble

If you need to analyze ABAP client code and want to identify links to SAP tables/programs, then you need to extract the SAP objects from your SAP system. The CAST SAP Extractor will perform several preliminary extraction steps before providing you with the required files (containing the SAP objects) that can be packaged and then delivered for analysis.

Note that each file outputted by the CAST SAP Extractor corresponds to one SAP object (source code, table or view) that has been extracted.

CAST SAP Extractor

The main engine behind the CAST SAP Extractor is an ABAP report which is responsible for extracting data from a SAP system based on an extraction selection scope. The main extraction report is entitled:

Z_CAST4SAP_MAIN_EXTRAC_R

Launching the Extraction report

The ABAP report can be run either through a SAP SE38 transaction or using the custom transaction ZCAST_EXTRACTOR.

Please ensure you are logged in either in English or in French. Nevertheless, in other languages, English selection screen texts will get displayed whenever possible.

SE38 transaction

As with any other ABAP report, you can launch the CAST SAP Extractor via the SAP SE38 transaction. Enter the name of the report (ZCAST4SAP_MAIN_EXTRAC_R) in the correct input field, then click the execution button as shown below:

You may encounter an error message related to authorization issues when launching the extraction tool in this way:

If you encounter this error, then you need to ensure that the user you are working with has been assigned to the PFCG role as described in CAST SAP Extractor NG - Installation and Uninstall - 8.4.x.

Custom transaction ZCAST_EXTRACTOR

When launching the CAST SAP Extractor with the custom transaction ZCAST_EXTRACTOR, please ensure that you do not forget to add "/n" or "/o" as a prefix to the transaction name, as is the case for any another standard SAP transaction starting with "/":

You may encounter an error message related to authorization issues when launching the extraction tool in this way: "You are not authorized to execute zcast_extractor transaction". If you encounter this error, then you need to ensure that the user you are working with has been assigned to the PFCG role as described in CAST SAP Extractor NG - Installation and Uninstall - 8.4.x.

Extraction types

The CAST SAP Extractor is able to extract either:

  • ABAP source code elements (i.e. ABAP code of reports, function modules, class methods, includes…)
  • SAP tables (i.e. detailed information about table description, related package, columns, keys…)
  • SAP views (i.e. detailed information about view description, related package, joined tables, join condition, selection condition…)

Therefore, based on the user selection scope, a different type of extraction can be executed. For this purpose, the extraction report selection screen is divided into two main areas:

Source Code Extraction menu

A Source Code Extraction menu which includes a variety of different selection options, fields and check boxes enabling you to define a source extraction scope. This first sub menu is entitled "Source Extraction" as shown below. Please see CAST SAP Extractor NG - ABAP source code extraction - 8.4.x for more information about this extraction type.

Table and View Extraction menu

A Table and View Extraction menu which includes a variety of different selection options, fields and check boxes enabling you to define a Table/View extraction scope. This second sub menu is entitled "Table Extraction" as shown below. n this menu by default only the Package Name is displayed, but when Advanced mode is checked, more options can be viewed.

Please see CAST SAP Extractor NG - SAP table and view extraction - 8.4.x for more information about this extraction type.

Advanced mode: