Now we come to the part which really impacts most readers of this blog. Why do SAP Security Consultants all see red when asked for &SAP_EDIT. The reason is given in the security trace below which shows the authority checks happening behind the scene, when someone tries to use the &SAP_EDIT option. The main culprits are highlighted below. SAP will only allow you to run &SAP_EDIT only when you have the authorization object S_DEVELOP in your user buffer with activity values 01, 02 for object type DEBUG. This same access is used by ABAP developers to debug code and with change access they can change the value of the return codes after a failed authority check (RC = 4 to RC = 0) and execute almost anything in SAP. For all practical purposes for an experienced user, the said S_DEVELOP access is same as assiging them with SAP_ALL and letting them loose in the Production server.