ABAP
| ABAP/4 | |
|---|---|
| Paradigm | Object-oriented, structured, imperative |
| Designed by | SAP SE |
| First appeared | 1983 |
| Stable release | 7.58
/ October 26, 2023 |
| Typing discipline | Static, strong, safe, nominative |
| OS | Cross-platform |
| Website | community |
| Major implementations | |
| SAP R/2, SAP R/3, SAP S/4HANA | |
| Influenced by | |
| Objective-C, COBOL, SQL | |
ABAP (Advanced Business Application Programming) is a domain-specific high-level programming language created by the German software company SAP SE. It is currently positioned, alongside Java, as the language for programming the SAP NetWeaver Application Server, which is part of the SAP NetWeaver platform for building business applications.
ABAP was originally an acronym for Allgemeiner Berichts-Aufbereitungs-Prozessor ("generic report preparation processor" in German), but was rebranded as Advanced Business Application Programming in 1996.
ABAP was advertised as fourth-generation programming language (4GL). It was originally the report language for SAP R/2, a platform that enabled large corporations to build mainframe business applications for materials management and financial and management accounting.
The ABAP language was originally used by developers to develop the SAP R/3 platform. It was also intended to be used by SAP customers to enhance SAP applications. Customers can develop custom reports and interfaces with ABAP programming. The language was geared towards more technical customers with programming experience.
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).