Getting the hang of ABAP

In my last blog, I did a comparative picture of the salaries for SAP professionals and while the salary rate varied from one SAP specialization to another, it has been shown that in general, SAP professional are earning a lot higher compared to other IT fields of specialization. It is no wonder that many programmers and IT specialists have been planning to jump into the SAP bandwagon.

But today's SAP has become more sophisticated than ever and with that comes a more powerful ABAP too. This means that programmers from other disciplines may think that just because they have mastered the basic programming constructs, learning ABAP would come as a breeze.

Getting the most out of ABAP requires a lot more than just having an knowing coding and even having an ABAP certification. ABAP works with SAP and SAP is dealing with business solutions and the business world is full of complexities greater than any non-business programmer could ever expect.

For those who want to go ABAP, and SAP professionals say advance programmers are the most preferred, understanding the complexities of enterprise resource planning (ERP) is the key. According to ABAP trainers, most people who into training were Visual Basic and Java programmers and one the basic problems they have encountered is in making them understand the complex architecture of SAP based on the three-tier design.

The three-tier client / server design is composed of the database, the applications and presentation logic. All these components are ran on three separate physical computers. Both the database and the applications components function in extracting and pushing data through the presentation logic tier.

When programmers become more and more familiar with SAP ERP, the step is focusing on the ABAP reports generation. In this step, these programmers need to have an in-depth working understanding of the ABAP dictionary which handles all of the processes pertaining to system data. Under the ABAP dictionary which is an interfaced part of the ABAP Development Workbench can be found the definitions of user all data types including the user defined types such as data elements, structures and table types. It is extremely important to know the dictionary by heart as this is the core of ABAP development where almost all the data are filtered through it.

After learning about SAP ERP and taking the ABAP dictionary by hear, the new developers must learn proficiency in performance optimization and upgrades. ERP is all about data and systems integration and it is critical to have a seamless integration of various data sources and disparate systems. As SAP is a world leader in business solutions, its ERP is top of the line with solutions for all types of industries including some in which people have never dreamed of to be possibly addressed by SAP.
Constant practice makes perfect. A certification is not enough because the theory just slips away. Hands-on, like in any other fields of IT, is what makes ABAP developers master the area of ABAP language in particular and ERP implementation in general.