And ABAP be still as bright.

Let’s start again after a long pause, with a shorter post (carrying some good news)…

Three weeks ago, when I was back from vacation during which we’ve experienced some almost scary things, SAP guys visited my company office with a long-waited-for presentation. The topic was, as you may expect from a technical-oriented presentation, the new possibilities that the latest NetWeaver release brings to a developer. It was nice, stuffed with information, six hour session. Well, I would strip it of some things that normally are useful only for SAP sales. What was interesting is that on that day, it was the very first time that I’ve heard some statement about the role of ABAP in the future.

The question is being asked again and again, since we’ve been in dotcom and Java hype: are we going to see ABAP obsoleted and replaced by Java or something else? If you try to look for some “roadmap”-type documents on SAP site, you will never find it. SAP is pushing SOA and “classic” ABAP is in a deep deep shadow now. So we’ve asked the question one more time. And heard a clear answer. Now guess: do you believe they are going to dump it and start it over? Do you think we customers are going to accept testing and debugging the brand new code. No way. The whole R/3, plus APO, plus many other “core” apps will be powered by ABAP. (And personally, I doubt that any of those guys operating machine tools at the factory floor will ever see “the cool cool benefits of SAP portals, whatever”.) I regret now that I did not write it down to have it signed by SAP representative. But it looks like “ABAP will still as bright.”

PS. If I made you think that Web apps are repulsive to me, you are mistaken. Go visit my personal site (link is on the right).