ABAP XSLT(Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformation)

enables the conversion of XML formats into any other XML formats. The ABAP runtime environment contains an SAP XSLT processor for performing XSL transformations.

The source and result of a general XSL transformation are XML data. When an XSL transformation is called using the statement CALL TRANSFORMATION, however, ABAP data can also be transformed directly to XML and back. For this purpose, a serialization or deserialization is performed implicitly, with asXML as an intermediate format.

In the case of transformations that use ABAP data as a source, the ABAP data is first serialized to a canonical XML representation (asXML) with the predefined identity transformation ID. This intermediate result is then used as the actual source for the XSL transformation. If the transformation ID itself is called in CALL TRANSFORMATION, the intermediate result is in the direct output.