Technical Articles
Do you know ABAP as a Programing Language?
Do you know ABAP?
As you know, ABAP is the programming language used by SAP products.
But you may not know ABAP as a programming language.
I would like to introduce you to ABAP again.
But you may not know ABAP as a programming language.
I would like to introduce you to ABAP again.
What does ABAP stand for?
ABAP once represented a general reporting processor in German,
but as the nature of the language itself changed,
now it meant Advanced Business Application Programming.
History of ABAP
We will look back on the history of ABAP when and how it was born.
The first procedural programming language, Fortran, was born in 1954,
and ABAP,was born about 30 years later in 1983 as a procedural language.
The first object-oriented language, simula, was born in 1962,
and ABAP Object was born 5 years after Java, as a object-oriented language.
ABAP exists as an object-oriented language that is not a machine language, but a language that can describe procedures that people understand.
How does ABAP differ from other languages?
So how does ABAP differ from other programming languages?
There are other languages that don’t require compilation, and there are many object-oriented languages.
Are you using ABAP because it is only programing language for SAP system?????
No, it’s not!
Here are the Strong Points of ABAP.
(1) You don’t have to change the SQL statement for each database
(2) you don’t have to think about the data model
(3) It has a lot of features, and you can aggregate the functions for each department, collaborate with other departments, and allocate the functions collectively for each position.
Anyway, about creating a “business application”,ABAP is so Strong!!
Don’t you want to open the ABAP editor now?(Is that just me?)
What will happen to ABAP in the future?
What will happen to ABAP in the future?
There have been guidelines for programs, but there are guidelines that can be developed more cleanly and efficiently.
It contains basic guid which may natural for developers, though if you look at this, you don’t have to write spaghetti code!(also for me lol)
There’s also a programming model, not just guidelines.
It is a programming model optimized for HANA to hammer out the chaotic procedural programming.
There are also videos and tutorials from so let’s learn more.
There are also videos and tutorials from so let’s learn more.
Summary
- ABAP was born in 1983, 37 years old, COBOL’s younger brother,5 year difference from Java.
- ABAP Object is extremely strong in terms of reflecting business logic.
- It will become clean and RESTful from now on!
You can’t say you don’t know ABAP anymore!
Let’s make ABAP future,
Spin the Future together with evolving ABAP!
Thank you for reading.
Hello Rena Takahashi,
thank you for that great presentation of ABAP. I would LOVE to re-use some of the slides and spread that point of view as high level onboarding. Is it possible for you to share the slide deck?
Cheers,
Alej
Hello Alejandro Sensejl
Thank you for reading and replying.Those slide is here.I will be glad if it will of any help.
https://www.slideshare.net/ssuser668c9a/past-abap-abap-to-the-futureen-229424978
*spelling corrected ver. (29/02/2020)
I will upload the movie about this before long.When I upload the movie on youtube,I’ll share here too.
FYI
I used this slide in this event held by chillSAP in japan.
【Organized by chillSAP】Any topic about SAP LT Festival ~Young Talent Edition~
event over view https://techplay.jp/event/764310
on Twitter https://togetter.com/li/1468142
blog by organizer https://www.sapsumikko.jp/entry/2020/02/13/chillsap-lightning-talk-matsuri
Best,
Rena
You’ve made a typo. It should be Allgemeiner. not Allgeminer. Also ABAP Objects, not ABAP Object.
Thank you for telling! I'll correct those!
Just saying 😉
Beautifully written and very nostalgic. Great work Rena Takahashi, !!!
Thanks for sharing!
I have to say that "History of ABAP" slide makes it look as if nothing significant happened in ABAP between 4.6 C and 7.4 but that's not entirely accurate, in my opinion. I'd at least mention 7.02 release. Secondary keys for internal tables, SAT, new debugger, code completion, all that happened in between. I'm using 7.31 daily and can say even that came a long way from 2005 when I first saw SAP. 7.4 is the whole other ballgame, of course, but "in between" releases deserve some honorary mention for paving the way.
Rena Takahashi, Thanks for sharing.