SAP
ABAP
ABAP stands for Advanced Business
Application Programming. It is a programming language developed by SAP. SAP is
a German company that develops ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning System)
systems. These systems are used by companies to track all information related
to the business integrating finance, sales, and materials data. ABAP/4 is the
programming language used for the thousand tiny embedded programs called
transactions that make up the application. The /4 means it is a fourth
generation language.
ABAP is code written in an
interpretive language similar to COBOL in syntax. The language can be coded to
look almost like COBOL. According to our text, it is a COBOL and Pascal
cross-breed. Its use allows SAP customers to extend the functionality of the
base product.
SAP is very flexible. It can be used
for specific business functions rather than the whole enterprise and can be
modified for the company’s specific needs. Every SAP installation has its own
specific configuration and set of functions. The cost of customizing is that
when upgraded every customization must be identified in the ABAP code and
changes made. This means upgrades are very costly. Customization should be
avoided for easier upgrades in the SAP software.A work process connects with
the database and has an ABAP language interpreter and processor.
History
When you program with ABAP on the
application server, you profit from a range of services, which in other
languages would have to be programmed manually with a great amount of effort.
Many of these services have resulted from the fact that the SAP NW Application
Server is the outcome of a long development period. You are thus benefiting from
the experience of many programmers, whose suggestions for improvement are
implemented in the server today.
Since the seventies, when the
language was a macro assembler, ABAP (Advanced Business Application
Programming) has been consistently optimized for business programming. With the
introduction of the R/3 System in the nineties, the ABAP language - now in its
fourth generation - became the basis of the entire system, in which all
applications and large parts of Basis (as it was referred to at the time) were
implemented. In the late nineties ABAP was extended to become a fully featured
object-oriented language, and the extension was named ABAP Objects.
ABAP is thus not only a mature
language that has proven itself in the practical field, but - on the basis of
its evolutionary strategy - it continues to be suited to the requirements of
business programming. The requests, suggestions, and requirements of the
software developers involved have flowed into this language over the years.
With the quality of its application programs, it has made SAP a world leader in
the development of business software.
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