SAP ABAP

ABAP is a high level programming language created by SAP that helps large corporations to customize the SAP ERP. ABAP can help customize workflows for financial accounting, materials management, asset management, and all other modules of SAP.

SAP’s current development platform NetWeaver also supports both ABAP and Java. The ABAP full form in SAP is Advanced Business Application Programming.

Here are the reasons for using SAP ABAP:

• SAP ABAP is used by developers to develop the SAP R3 Platform.
• It is a simple language that is easy to learn when it comes to programming.
• It allows you to choose from procedural and object-oriented programming.
• SAP is an enterprise resource planning software to store all important pieces of data
• It also helps SAP customers to improve their SAP-based applications.
• It allows you to create custom reports and interfaces.
• ABAP language is quite easy for programmers. However, it is not a right tool that can be used by non-programmers.

Overview:

ABAP remains as the language for creating programs for the client–server R/3 system, which SAP first released in 1992. As computer hardware evolved through the 1990s, more and more of SAP's applications and systems were written in ABAP.

By 2001, all but the most basic functions were written in ABAP. In 1999, SAP released an object-oriented extension to ABAP called ABAP Objects, along with R/3 release 4.6. SAP's current development platform NetWeaver supports both ABAP and Java.

ABAP has an abstraction between the business applications, the operating system and database. This ensures that applications do not depend directly upon a specific server or database platform and can easily be ported from one platform to another.

SAP Netweaver currently runs on UNIX (AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, Linux), Microsoft Windows, i5/OS on IBM System i (formerly iSeries, AS/400), and z/OS on IBM System z (formerly zSeries, S/390). Supported databases are HANA, SAP ASE (formerly Sybase), IBM Db2, Informix, MaxDB, Oracle, and Microsoft SQL Server (support for Informix was discontinued in SAP Basis release 7.00).