The Origins of ABAP – an Overview 

As a programming language of SAP, ABAP (Advanced Business Application Programming) has contributed in no small way to the success of SAP’s application software. Since the seventies, when the language was a macro assembler, ABAP has been consistently optimized for business programming. With the introduction of the R/3 System in the nineties, the ABAP language – now in its fourth generation – became the basis of the entire system, in which all applications and large parts of Basis (as it was referred to at the time) were implemented.

A further, significant step forward was the development of ABAP Objects with Release 4.6. In keeping with SAP’s philosophy of safeguarding the existing billions’ worth of investments made by customers in ABAP, ABAP Objects is an object-based enhancement of the procedural ABAP language available up to that point. Thanks to this evolutionary strategy with its high level of downward compatibility, the many millions of lines of productive, procedural ABAP coding still run on the NetWeaver Application Server – the name for the technological basis of SAP since Release 6.10.

ABAP is thus not only a mature language that has proven itself in the practical field, but – on the basis of its evolutionary strategy – it continues to be suited to the requirements of business programming. The requests, suggestions, and requirements of the software developers involved have flowed into this language over the years. With the quality of its application programs, it has made SAP a world leader in the development of business software.

Up to the year 2000, ABAP was the sole language in which SAP programmed its successful business software. Since then,  the SAP NetWeaver AS combines an ABAP and a J2EE server. SAP uses the opportunities provided by both technologies for its products, but still continues to invest in the further development of ABAP.