The Basics - What's RICEF?

What is RICEF? Many a times asked in interviews! Unfortunately a lot of people fail to answer a simple question, even though working on it for years.

You usually come accross the word RICEF when searching for SAP ABAP Developer jobs.
RICEF isn't a standard SAP acronym. It's not defined by SAP like we have ABAP, ALV, etc. It's a comon term used to describe five areas of technical developments in SAP.

RICEF stands for Reports, Interfaces, Conversions, Enhancements, Forms.

R- Reports
R stands for Report developments. All the technical objects/developments that deal with programing of SAP Reports. It includes different types of reports; Simple reports where you output using WRITE statements, Simple ALV reports, ALV Grid, ALV Grid with advanced functionality,etc.

I - Interfaces
I stands for Interface developments. Interfaces are ALE/IDOCs development. Involves not just ABAP programming for IDOCs but also IDOC customization.

C - Conversion
C stands for conversion objects. Conversion refers to BDC programing. Data upload from legacy system in flat files format to SAP system is done via Conversion Objects. This involves uploading data through BDC, LSMW, BAPI, etc.

E - Enhancements
Enhancements are User Exits, Customer Exits, BADI's etc. ABAP code that has to be written in order to enhance SAP system functionality.

F - Forms
Forms include SAP Smartforms, SAP Scripts. Technical development that deals with fetching necessary data from SAP system and displaying in terms of forms for printout are classified as under Forms.

Common questions :-
1. As an ABAPer, why do I care what RICEF means? What does it have to do with me?
Well it's really simple. It's just that one must know the category of the technical development he is working upon.
2. What's the use of RICEF?
SAP Project managers usually refer technical development in terms of RICEF objects.
Project technical team leads usually distinguish the objects based on this categorization and assign them to team on basis of experience. Reports being a first choice for beginners and Enhancements being the favourite choice for experts.

Thats all on RICEF!! Details on each of these category coming soon!!