How to know the "ABAP method"?

Question

I have never worked with SAP. I have a reasonable understanding of the business, but no accounting. How to learn ABAP on examples which at the same time enlighten me "in the SAP way"?

It should not be deep knowledge, just for someone who has been in the world of Python and C #, but needs to understand how the SAP world works.

(This is not a duplicate of "Learning SAP-ABAP" )

Answer 1

Learning ABAP is not particularly difficult if you know other programming languages.

Let ABAP and ABAP OO be distinguished first. ABAP is an old, procedural language, and ABAP OO is its extension to classes.

ABAP has the usual control structures, such as if-then-else or loop. Its syntax is a bit used (I found the particularly annoying part about putting or missing spaces in front of the brackets), but definitely doable. There are some structures that you don’t find in C ++ and C #, for example, grouping functions in functional groups that have their own local variables, so if you call something that is in another function group, everything can become messy. But overall, if you understand the scope and namespace, this should not be a problem.

I found ABAP OO quite simple compared to ABAP because it basically only added classes / packages that I knew from C ++ / C # before.

To get to know them, I would suggest the following for someone who is new to ABAP and wants to learn about DEEP (see more functional aspects below):
-Prepare yourself a proper ABAP book, for example. something from SAP Press
-Don't read it yet

-start with a web course or a simple book, on the principle of "learn ABAP in 24 hours"
standard coding
- if you code, you will inevitably ask yourself: "How does it work and what?" is PERFORM using pass-by-reference or pass-by-value to pass arguments? "See these questions in your ABAP book.
- perhaps in a few months you will be quite familiar with the language that you can read in the book without falling asleep

Just a caution: it’s good to know ABAP programming, but even if you don’t think that other SAP technologies consist of (for example, workflows or PDF forms that have nothing to do with ABAP), there are still many structures that differ in their logic . So, even if you know C ++, knowing the Win32 framework does not mean that you can start pushing code under UNIX, knowing that ABAP does not mean that you can work productively in a specific module right away. Unfortunately, SAP modules tend to use different structures, some of which are more commonly used than others.

If you do not want to have a deep knowledge of ABAP, but want to understand SAP modules functionally, you should consider using the products themselves in addition to programming and studying functional aspects.

I am afraid that there really is no quick way to find out how SAP World works; you need a little technical, functional and architectural knowledge for this, and since the modules are so different from all these aspects, it takes a long time until you can get an extensive overview of everything. But even with technical and some functional knowledge, you would be on the way; as the saying goes, "at SAP no one expects you to know everything."

Answer 2

There are at least two different sets of problems you should look for:

• Knowledge of ABAP as a programming language
• Knowledge of the "Business Domain" that you record your software and its implementation in SAP - tables, forms, programs, reports, etc. (and each of the modules, such as FI HR, etc., is larger than the average person can usually own)

(1) provides general knowledge on how to write a program, read and update a database, and possibly write a graphical interface. But the programs you write will almost always be in context (2), so you will also need to know this.

If you want to get started, it is best to have a general knowledge of the ABAP language; the business domain cannot be extracted from the book. Actual work on a project is much more useful.

Answer 3

Start by downloading one of the netweaver trial systems from sdn.sap.com (select one of the ABAP trial systems).

For reference, you have ABAP directories online here (there are also many small sample programs in the reference documents). For more sample code, you can enter transaction SE38 (report editor) and look for programs starting with BC, or starting with DEMO (put BC * in the name field and press F4).

Answer 4

since you asked me to answer this question. I was hired as a sap-java developer because there is very little in the market, although I did not know anything about sap java before I entered. I received advice from my colleagues and learned to become productive as quickly as possible. In the end, it was not so difficult. Now I took a year, but I'm still in a novice state. Sap technology is huge. SDN (Sap Developer Network) is my best friend when I'm stuck.

This definitely helps when you enter the company with sap knowledge, because you do not need to create all systems from scratch, and you have licenses for various sap products. Most trial versions of sap just don't do the trick in the long run.