Overview of SAP ABAP

Generally SAP ABAP stands for Advanced Business Application Programming. This SAP ABAP is a high level language designed by the SAP Company. As SAP ABAP is a 4^th generation language this is used to develop applications for the SAP/R3 Systems.  SAP ABAP cannot run directly on an operating system. For this, it requires a set of loading programs, which also interprets and buffer its both input & output.

SAP is complete ERP solution, and ABAP is programming language used in SAP module development. SAP modules are configured with different types of databases such as ms sql server, oracle etc. Most of the big companies buy sap module and additionally adds those modules according to their requirement.

SAP Software contains two types of stacks. One of them is SAP ABAP stack which includes all the other original technology that SAP contains. SAP ABAP is used for developing RICEFW type of objects within the SAP software. RICEFW means Reports, Interfaces, Conversions, Extensions, Forms and Workflows.

The ABAP stack is traditionally navigated via Transaction Codes (T-Codes) to take you to different screens within the SAP Environment. From a technical perspective, you will do all of your performance and tuning of the WORK PROCESSES in the SAP system here, as well as configuring all of the system RFCs, building user profiles and also doing the necessary interfacing between the OS (usually Windows or HPUX) and the Oracle Database (currently Enterprise 11g).

There are two primarily technologists that run ALL of these functions, they are called SAP Basis (NetWeaver) Administrators and ABAP Developers.

SAP has specific pre-populated functional packages for different business areas. For example, Exxon runs the "IS Oil & Gas" package while Bank of America runs the "Banking" package, while further still Lockheed Martin runs the "Aerospace & Defense" package. These packages were developed over time by the amalgamation of intelligent functional customizations that could be intelligently ported to the system via inclusion in dot releases.