Intro­duction to the ABAP RESTful Appli­cation Programming Model (RAP)

ABAP, which stands for “Advanced Business Appli­cation Programming”, is the proprietary programming language of SAP, a leading provider of business software. This programming language was developed speci­fi­cally for mass data processing in commercial appli­ca­tions and has been the standard programming language for SAP modules since 1990. Origi­nally, the abbre­viation “ABAP” stood for “General Report Appli­cation Processor”, as this programming language could only be used to develop customer-specific evaluation programs that could not make any changes to the database. Later, “Advanced Business Appli­cation Programming” became the official explanation of the acronym. The syntax of the ABAP programming language is similar to COBOL in some ways, but differs greatly from other programming languages such as Java, C or Python. As ABAP is a non-standar­dized programming language, it is only used in connection with SAP programs. In this environment, however, ABAP provides powerful concepts for the development of business appli­ca­tions. ABAP was designed from the outset to deal with mass data in a business context and therefore differs signi­fi­cantly from other programming languages and inter­faces. SAP’s programming language is similar to COBOL in its syntax and was developed speci­fi­cally for mass data processing in commercial appli­ca­tions. The intro­duction of SAP NetWeaver has expanded the development possi­bi­lities by offering a process and programming environment for the Java programming language in addition to ABAP. This led to the estab­lishment of a further appli­cation server on which the Java-based programs are imple­mented. ABAP is a vendor-specific development language from SAP that differs from other development languages in many respects. Thanks to the “friends” concept, for example, classes can be “friends” with each other and version management takes place internally. The ABAP OO extension supports both proce­dural and project-oriented programming models, offering developers many new possi­bi­lities in one central location. Invented in the early 1980s and subject to constant further development since then, ABAP is now used to program the SAP Appli­cation Server. The programming language thus forms the basis of all SAP systems. It allows SAP software products to be adapted to the exact requi­re­ments of customers — even when the system’s own custo­mizing is no longer suffi­cient. In addition, ABAP can be used to write completely new business appli­ca­tions in order to integrate them into an existing SAP system. ABAP therefore offers a wide range of development possi­bi­lities and plays a decisive role in the custo­mization and extension of SAP systems to meet the exact requi­re­ments of customers. The ABAP OO extension supports both proce­dural and project-oriented programming models, offering developers many new possi­bi­lities in one central location.

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