What is the "Obsolete ABAP statements" issue in S/4HANA migration?

Use of obsolete ABAP syntax: MOVE, COMPUTE, WRITE TO, SORT BY ASCENDING/DESCENDING without field list. Flagged by ATC S/4HANA readiness check. Not blocked but increases technical debt.

How much effort does it take to fix "Obsolete ABAP statements"?

Remediation effort is rated S — Small (hours). Severity: MEDIUM.

Which tool checks for Obsolete ABAP statements automatically?

The s4ready.ai A1 Readiness Scanner checks for Obsolete ABAP statements (and 29 other rules) automatically across your custom ABAP codebase. Results include object-level findings with severity and effort estimates.

MEDIUM Effort: S — Small (hours) ABAP Language

How to remediate: Obsolete ABAP statements

Use of obsolete ABAP syntax: MOVE, COMPUTE, WRITE TO, SORT BY ASCENDING/DESCENDING without field list.

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What changes in S/4HANA

Flagged by ATC S/4HANA readiness check. Not blocked but increases technical debt.

Before and after: ABAP code example

Before (ECC)

* ECC: obsolete ABAP statements
MOVE lv_source TO lv_target.
COMPUTE lv_result = lv_a + lv_b.
SORT lt_table ASCENDING BY field1.

After (S/4HANA)

* S/4HANA: modern ABAP syntax
lv_target = lv_source.
lv_result = lv_a + lv_b.
SORT lt_table BY field1 ASCENDING.

Effort estimate and common pitfalls

Effort estimate

S — Small (hours)

Estimate is per affected object. Total effort scales with the number of occurrences in your codebase. Use the A1 scan to get an object-level count before estimating the full project.

Common pitfalls

! Forgetting to update all occurrences in the same program
! Not running ATC after the change to confirm the finding is resolved

Related rules to check

MEDIUM S

Unchecked SY-SUBRC

Database operations or function module calls without checking SY-SUBRC return code.

HIGH L

ABAP Cloud restricted object access

Access to SAP internal objects without C1 release status. These are blocked in ABAP Cloud.

HIGH S

Unassigned field symbol access

ASSIGN or FIELD-SYMBOL without checking IS ASSIGNED causes GETWA_NOT_ASSIGNED dumps.

Find every instance of this issue in your codebase

The A1 scanner checks all 30 compatibility rules — including Obsolete ABAP statements — across your custom ABAP objects and produces a prioritised remediation backlog.

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← All remediation rules Resources →

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