ABAP – what happened?

ABAP is an abbreaviation of the German word Allgemeiner Berichtsaufbereitungsprozessor if you run the phrase through babelfish and it translates to “General report preparation processor”. For a long time ABAP was seen as that a report writing language, to the uninitiated it was viewed as a lesser easy to learn language and the programmers who used it were looked down on as coders and not developers. ABAP has gone through many iterations, the biggest of which would have to be the introduction of SAP WebAS where ABAP finally broke away from being a report writing language and became the backbone to a suite of web application development platforms.

SAP TECHED 2007 LAS VEGAS (redux)

This years SAP Teched tells us to
“CONNECT. COLLABORATE. CO-INNOVATE!”

Connect, collaborate, and co-innovate with the best minds in the IT industry.

Get the knowledge, skills, and professional network needed to take advantage of SOA.

Learn how to use the power and flexibility of SAP NetWeaver to co-innovate with SAP

Inspiring I know. Before you run off to convince your boss that you should go to Vegas for a week long jolly. Enjoy
“ENTERPRISE SOA – PUT THE POWER TO WORK!”

Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) and SAP

I read everywhere that you need an ESB to truly implement SOA.

Having read many articles about what an ESB is, I am still unsure whether it is a product or a pattern.

If it is a product does SAP have one ?