SAP Core | SAP core functionalities and technologies
What is ABAP?
ABAP is the programming language developed by SAP to support the development of business applications on its technical platform (currently named SAP Netweaver).
ABAP runs on the SAP application server which lies between the presentation server (responsible for managing the data input from and the data output to the end user) and the database server (responsible for managing the data input from and the data output to the database).
ABAP is not a system or generic purpose programming language like C, C++ or Java. It was clearly designed to be a business oriented development language (nearer to COBOL language) which means practically that it provides natively advanced instructions and functionalities that facilitate the development of business applications (e.g. built in memory management, database interface, …). It also means the language does not offer the same level of flexibility that a more generic language usually offers (pointers, advanced memory management, types casting, …).
The limitations of ABAP being understood in the context of its objectives, the language (together with its accompanying development environment) proves to be a robust and stable tool to develop business applications.
Lately, the original language has been extended to support object oriented programming. Not all features of object oriented programming are supported by the object oriented version of ABAP but the set of functionalities proposed by the language is usually sufficient to cover most business oriented developments.