XSL Transformations

This section describes the call of an XSL transformation using the CALL TRANSFORMATION. The source and result of an XSL transformation can be XML documents or ABAP data.

An XSL transformation is a program in the Repository that is written in XSLT and used for the transformation of XML documents ( XSLT program). When calling an XSL transformation using the CALL TRANSFORMATION statement, you can also directly convert ABAP data into XML and vice versa. For this purpose, a serialization or deserialization is carried out implicitly.

• In the case of transformations that use ABAP data as a source, the ABAP data is first serialized into a canonical XML representation (asXML) with the identical transformation ID. This intermediate result then serves as the actual source for the XSL transformation.

• In the case of transformations that have ABAP data as a result, the result of the XSL transformation is deserialized directly into the ABAP data. A prerequisite for the deserialization is that that result represents a canonical XML format. For transformations from XML to ABAP, the XML is conceptually also first transformed into an asXML structure, which is then deserialized with the identical transformation ID, even if technically only only one transformation step takes place.

As of Release 6.10, the ABAP runtime environment contains an SAP XSLT processor for executing the transformations. It supports almost all XSLT statements and provides enhancements (extension instructions) such as the possibility to call ABAP methods from XSLT programs. Documentation for the SAP-XSLT processor is available in the application help under SAP XSLT Processor - Reference.