The Future of Advanced Business Application Programming - Assignment Example

Running head: THE FUTURE OF ABAP The Future of ABAP Affiliation November 2008 This paper discusses about future of Advanced Business Application Programming (ABAP) which is a fourth generation programming language was created by SAP. The main objective of this research is to gain a thorough understanding of ABAP. This paper provides discussion and analysis of strengths and weaknesses of ABAP. The other objective of this paper is to identify ABAP’s competition for this purpose this paper will provide a comparison with JAVA based environment of NETWEAVER. ABAP stands Advanced Business Application Programming.  It is a programming language used for business application built-up by SAP.  SAP is a company of Germany that builds up ERP systems or Enterprise Resource Planning System.  These systems are utilized by corporations to trail all information connected to the business assimilate finance, sales, and resources data.  ABAP is a fourth generation language which utilized for the thousand small embedded programs known as transactions that structure the application.  ABAP is a code written in a language like COBOL that is also known as interpretive language in syntax.  The language is able to be coded to appear almost like COBOL. Its application permits SAP clients to expand the functionality of the core product (Nina, 2000). SAP is extremely flexible, it is capable to be employed for particular business functions quite than the entire business enterprise and can be customized for the companies for there precise requirements.  Each SAP installation has its own precise configuration and set of functions.  The price of adapting is that when upgraded each customization have to be recognized in the ABAP code and modifications made.  This shows that upgrades are extremely expensive (Nina, 2000). Customization should be evaded for stretchy upgrades in the SAP software. A work process linked by means of the database and has an ABAP language processor and interpreter. ABAP residues the language for producing programs and applications for the client server R/3 system, which SAP initially came out in year 1992 (Nina, 2000). As computer hardware area developed in the course of the 1990s, progressively of SAPs systems and applications were written in ABAP background. SAP offered an object oriented addition to ABAP known as ABAP Objects, by the side of with R/3 release 4.6 in year1999. By year 2001, all except the mainly basic functions were written and coded in ABAP language (Boyle, 2007). ABAP programs If we talk about the ABAP programs and their applications then we come to know that ABAP programs execute/run at the application server level, here we got the application that is, both the applications offered by SAP and the one you build up yourself. The ABAP programs have three steps mainly first they read data from the database, and then they process the data, and lastly they possibly store data. ABAP programs are propagated on the application server. The plan of user dialogs and the design of database accesses are of particular significance when coding application programs. The user is simply paying attention to how his company’s operation flows and how data is able to be entered and output contained by the transaction. The technical features of programming are fewer striking for the user (Kretschmer et al, 1996). The application user does not have need of knowing the exact flow of the ABAP program instructions on the application server. For a regular user, the SAP System is similar to a "Black Box". In Theoretical words, though, there are three diverse kinds of screens: (Keller et al, 2007) Standard screens, Selection screens, Lists Each sort of screen offers diverse services to the user. Here the mission of the developer is to choose for apiece user dialog precisely those kinds that are the majority appropriate for the achievement of the jobs concerned. On one occasion the user carries out a user accomplishment, for instance by deciding a menu task, a function key, or a pushbutton, enter, the control is transferred from the presentation server to the application server. Simply a few fractions of the ABAP program will then be processed. If an advance user dialog is triggered from inside the ABAP program, the system broadcasts the screen, and control is just the once again transferred to the presentation server. Current ABAP Status This section of the paper elaborates the current status and the new advancements that have been done to make the ABAP more enhanced working tool for business application development. It consists of professional tools and facilities employed to expand R/3 applications to put in improvements and get together individual requirements.  It is able to be utilized self-governing of SAP software to build up your own applications.  The ABAP programming language has progressed to comprise object-oriented elements and techniques presently. ABAP Object is a fresh making of the APAB virtual machine and permits component incorporation by means of JavaBeans or ActiveX.  Release of APAB /4 of R/3 contains object oriented improvements to ABAP programming language for business applications (Mccarthy et al, 2002). It will enhance preservation and superiority and reusability attributes of the code as well as efficiency.  In ABAP there are diverse kinds of data like structure, character field, integer or internal table.  The workbench permits developers to swiftly and with no trouble customize and formulate bigger obtainable SAP applications or generate innovative applications to convene their requirements. Now it presents more power and versatility desirable to develop various client server applications.  ABAP turned out to be simple to learn and implement. Developers now do not have need of knowing an exact technological background to write code and develop applications. ABAP turned out to be keyword oriented.  It holds up prototyping based program development and prearranged programming. The syntax facilitates programmers to rapidly write and with no trouble address task significant client-server application requirements (Gilbert, 2000). Can ABAP will archaic? SAP is putting together ABAP and JAVA so in near future ABAP will be out of date and JAVA will be in. Then this development field will be a great deal occupied by java programmers (Reed, 2007). ABAP has some unique qualities that keep it in, and there are very few chances to become obsolete. ABAP can not die for the reason because it is the easiest development tool for business application development. If we see software development cost by ABAP development then we would be able to see that the project developed in ABAP can be completed in less time as match up to to Java.  Another main point that I have accessed that SAP is not stopping ABAP however immediately given a choice to develop in java, though it will be an exceptional option for ABAP developers to learn java also. ABAP is not a substitute for any language and at the similar time no other language is a substitute for ABAP.  FYI, ABAP is an end to an ABAP/4. It is widely comprehensive with the introduction of Web Application Server initial from release WAS 620.  In Object Oriented Paradigm ABAP is the merely language that goes tremendously close up to all the distinctiveness of OOP features still matched to C++ and JAVA early from release WAS 630. We would be able to develop and extend web applications with the help of ABAP. It is a great pact much more than what we observe from R/2 and R/3 3.X releases. There is another plus point added by SAP by initiating J2EE stand as an interchange to construct an implementation quicker as in the market there are a lot of JAVA developers contrasted to ABAP resources.  Moreover, we identify that ABAP is the SAP proprietary language. Except for R/3 kernel, each transaction /application as well as BASIS is written in ABAP. 1 Portal Development: ABAP perform better than Java? In an article that is titled “Why ABAP Performs Better in Portal Development than Java” written by Mr. Axel Angeli and Mr. Lynton Grice regarding the topic, amongst all measures, they have dominated that winner is ABAP. They are correct in environment of business stuff. It is analyzed that the ABAP language is not stiff to learn for a computer programmer. Experience is enormously significant in SAP world not merely for realistic consultants although as well as for the technical consultants. When we build up ABAP programs, we have to be capable to distinguish functional consultants necessities and confer them. To do so, we have a fundamental knowledge of commerce matters, dealings, scenarios, etc. And even as we know, there are no high-quality documentations concerning technical objects; thus it is right to say that experience is vital (Davis et al., 1997). Next have a look at few points that I have collected in the favor of ABAP. (Martin, 2000) ABAP permits simple source code debugging and as well as in production background ABAP has a matchless operation and version management service, TMS. Presents BSP editions have further detailed intrinsic data entry justification practice ABAP initiated a fully translucent source code just-in time compiler. ABAP puts together the Data Dictionary addicted to Development Environment. Presently there are far extra ABAP developers with in-depth commerce procedure know-how on the marketplace than for any other progressed setting. ABAP will carry on ruling the back-end, and Java the front-end. It is observed that ABAP is used 80% in portal development and Java has been selected 20% of the development that is enormously intricate on the front end. These all points indicate that ABAP is still best choice for the portal development (Martin, 2000). Future of ABAP In this section I will explain that what will be the future of the ABAP. I will incorporate few arguments from the article titled as “What Does SAP Say about the Future of ABAP? (Reed, 2007): It was observed that one of the most popular topics at SAP TechEd year 2007 was the altering environment of the SAP developer skillfulness position. SAP customers don’t aspiration to determine themselves with a development team that would be have shortage of the abilities to put into practice the latest SAP functionality, and SAP programmers are in front of sufficient confronts with not having to be anxious that their abilities will no longer be desirable on project sites. So they are concerned what will be their future. In this article it is mentioned that writer has came to know that new SAP programs are written in Java, and they are anxious that the NetWeaver CE is a fully Java based environment. The NetWeaver Developer Studio is as well approximately fully Java based (Reed, 2007). However ABAP is not as outdated as several people might think. The writer mentioned that during his group interview with SAP CTO Vishal Sikka, he has been known that there are yet 238,000,000 lines of ABAP code in SAP (reed, 2007). What this shows: ABAP is yet well-established in SAP, and SAP is still well-established in ABAP. Vishal as well as pointed out that while a number of innovative SAP programs are written in Java, a number of them are written in ABAP as well (Reed, 2007). ABAP is yet producing its attendance felt: a number of the new NetWeaver PI working functionality was written in ABAP. Mr. Thomas Jung of SAP Labs, who writes an extraordinary developer’s blog on SDN, notified that a number of the fundamental NetWeaver tasks were developed in ABAP, and without doubt there is the Web Dynpro for ABAP. Jung as well as told writer that the ABAP Workbench is undoubtedly element of NetWeaver, and is being organized with lots of the bells and whistles that the Java side of NetWeaver is getting (Robinson, 2000). It can be concluded that ABAP is yet a fitting partition of the SAP landscape. However there are no queries that when it comes to designing inventive business enterprise services, Java is the language as a decision in the majority cases. No, it can not be said that ABAP viewpoint is wistful, other than it’s not leaving away anytime almost immediately (Reed, 2007). It is analyzed that the whole SAP landscape is varying and the consequence on ABAP vs. Java is not the acceptable manner to distinguish the transitions that are happening. The design of the latest eSOA NetWeaver development platform is purposely planned to build it immaterial which programming language you are utilizing. The eSOA layer is anticipated to endeavor with some open standard, so among eSOA and PI, programmers should be capable to utilize their situation of choice and be interoperable with SAP (Reed, 2007). SAP’s modeling tools like Visual Composer, the imminent Aris for NetWeaver, in addition to a latest cover up modeling environment are all planned to adjust the development procedure and highlighted the plan of reusable parts over complicated hand-coded customizations (Jenkins, 2008). Almost immediately, these modeling situations might yet fabricate sufficient repeated code to make it probable for the "Business Process Experts" of the prospect to do all the expansion effort. A number of have recommended that as a great deal as 70 percent of all hand-coding will go away on one occasion these tools are completely realized (Reed, 2007). That debate goes further than the boundary of this part. The future of SAP progress," and additional intentionally, the ability set of the "SAP programmers/developer of the future," will be a widespread subject that requires lot of time and energy to wrap up the real decisions (Keller et al, 2007). NetWeaver Features SAP NetWeaver CE is the preliminary in a series of creation releases throughout the next 12 to 18 months. The latest products are ordained to offer a basis for the ensuing generation of SAP applications and for SAP business enterprise Service Oriented Architecture (Keller et al, 2007). SAP is placing onward NetWeaver CE as a device to put into practice applications overriding SAP Enterprise SOA services. It puts together a number of end products interested in a joint, Eclipse based work tool. It comprises life cycle management tools and adapters to SAP applications that are ERP 6.0 and R/3. The center runtime support is presented by a Java Platform, Enterprise Edition 5 dedicated application server that will be afterward incorporated with SAPs proprietary Advanced Business Application Programming platform (Keller et al, 2007). NetWeaver CE is positioned as a process to build up and install composite applications. It is mainly intended at SAP consumers and partners; however it is able to incorporate non-SAP applications and services. It, and it’s self-governing from ABAP, could present SAP chances further than accessible users of SAP applications. The statement enlarges SAPs SOA enabling stand and corroborates the corporations apparition for compound applications, which was before apparent primarily in its xApps packaged grouping applications. Additionally, NetWeaver CE takes up with its contestants in values hold up by releasing a Java EE 5 platform in front of the similar to of IBM, JBoss and Oracle (Keller et al, 2007). SAPs worth offer links NetWeaver CE to SAP ERP 6.0 Enterprise SOA and grown-up SAP applications, however it will have to be additionally articulated in conditions of application situations and erect industries. Even though a number of self-governing software vendors and systems integrators are previously working on NetWeaver CE, it has to as well win broad sustain from associates, and exhibit value from side to side an important number of manufacture references, above all in hybrid SAP/non-SAP situations (Keller et al, 2007). ABAP Features In this section I will present few features that still make the ABAP the language of choice and mostly people prefer it on the NetWeaver.: this discussion will focus on the programming related environment. First of all main feature is Sharing Data: By means of ABAP shared objects, you are able to aggregate data in memory on one occasion at a middle place. Diverse users and programs are able to use this data without copying (Kretschmer et al, 1996). Then another point in favor of ABAP is Developing Persistency: For permanent storage of data in ABAP, you exploit relational database tables by resources of database independent like Open SQL that is integrated in ABAP. Though, you can as well as store chosen objects transparently or way in the incorporated database or further databases by means of proprietary SQL. Here we have also the feature of Connectivity and Interoperability: The swap infrastructure and web services are the resources by which programmers are able to put into practice a service-oriented planning. With Web services, you are able to offer and use services separately of execution or protocol. In addition you are able to do inside NetWeaver and in the contact with other systems. With the qualities of the exchange infrastructure, you are able to facilitate, administer, and adapt incorporation scenarios among systems (Kretschmer et al, 1996). Then the new feature that recently made the ABAP more usable that is ABAP Objects ABAP utilization an object-oriented interfaces. Then next feature in ABAP is making enhancements: By means of the enhancement structure, you are able to advance function modules, programs, and global classes with no alteration in addition to put back existing code. The change Framework allows you make active simply exact development objects or improvements in a system (Davis et al., 1997). Conclusion This paper has presented that how ABAP has improved and how its enduring features still make it the language of choice. The initiation of JAVA based setting of NETWEAVER though have effected the reputation and usage of ABAP, but lots of ABAP users still believe that it is the ultimate solution for the business application development. So it can be concluded from the whole discussion that ABAP will continue its marketplace, though the release of JAVA based environment of NETWEAVER has affected its marketplace, because it has addressed several ABAP related issues. Tool that offers most excellent and user satisfied working environment stays in the market. References 1. Arber, G., Kirchner, J. (2007). ABAP Basics. Galileo/SAP Press. German edition first published 2005 by Galileo Press. 2. Boyle, T. (2007). 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