What is the next step for ABAP developers ?

[Former Member]

Hello Gurus,

In recent times there have been so many rumours and whispers about SAP's future course and the slow demise of ABAP.

I graduated with a B.Tech degree in Computer Engineering in 2007 and started my career in ABAP, I have also completed

SAP ABAP certification ( in the year 2008 ) and now have a total of 8 years of experience in implementation and support projects.

I request the SAP gurus and mentors to kindly help me with at least suggestions what are the core technology areas I should learn

to keep myself in demand and up to date with changing technologies in SAP landscape. I want to stay as a technical  consultant.

There are many old threads but I was not satisfied with what I read and more over the situation has changed in 2015 significantly

than what it used to be earlier.

Please suggest....

Thanks and Regards,

Prasenjit

[shaik_sajid]

Dear Prasenjit,

As far as I know ABAP will always be there....

However if you want to be upto date with changing technologies then you can learn UI5 Fiori or HANA.

All the Best.

Regards

Shaik

[Former Member]

Thanks Shaik.

Regards,

Prasenjit

[vikrant_dev1]

Hi Prasenjit,

From how i see the changes till 2015 and beyond, SAP ABAP is surely going to be there in coming future. Few things I can suggest are :

1) Learn ABAP in eclipse and ABAP for HANA as eclipse and NW Studio seems to coming out as a single platform for all development efforts going forward. (we have WebIDE also but it has limited features and is more for UI5 design so far as i see). For things which are not possible through Eclipse on ABAP, you can always switch back to our good old ABAP Workbench.

2) The trend looks like most of the backend transactions are going to be exposed as UI5 and Fiori Apps, so if you have been working on UI output for your ABAP programs, things like Module pool, Web-dynpro, BSP etc, the UI5 development knowledge would be good addition.

3) Lastly, as most of the GUI screen transactions may be exposed as Fiori Dashboard Apps, the remaining transactions in SAP Backend may look a bit too much of Visual transition for the End-users. So Screen Personas to enrich the look and feel of backend transactions is another thing you can learn as additional benefit.

Thanks,

Vikrant

[Former Member]

Hello Vikrant,

Thanks for your reply and time, SAP UI5 seems to be really in good traction at the moment and i am investing in it. Actually i have started learning HTML, CSS, JavaScript and JQuery. So i am getting prepared for the plunge. I believe ABAP experience coupled with  UI5, OData and Gateway services should be good enough to survive the next decade.

Does it makes any sense to go into direct HANA development and data modelling or knowing and implementing CDS should be enough?

Regards,

Prasenjit

[vikrant_dev1]

Hi Prasenjit,

I would say you can go one step at a time. Trying to learn everything without implementing some may have its own problems. Since the topic of discussion is next steps for ABAP developer, I would say my above points added to ABAP/HANA CDS  should be more than enough. If you wish to go to HANA modelling, that opens up its own skill area of Analytics. If you can manage it all together, that would be exceptional

Regards,

Vikrant

[santhu_gowdaz]

I completely agree with above comments. ABAP will be there, But not like today market.

All the technologies are concentrate on mobile application, lightweight application. I worked as Java developer almost 2 years. I used JAVASCRIPT only for frontend field validation but now every thing in front end and java used for connection between backend and frontend.

what i understood is server side languages like ABAP, JAVA not have much work in future.

If you know ABAP learn Gateway, UI5, Fiori added value for your future.

[Former Member]

Thanks for your reply.

I just think SAP is slowly becoming a platform for HTML developers, any HTML CSS guys comes in and now they are the valued ones though we created the data models and services and all the enablers. But he/she created a fancy looking gorgeous screen on the PC that is attractive and so wow and great are the adjectives reserved for their effort that is 5-10 % of the entire development.

This is not cool at least I do not like this happening . Look there's no one valuing our C/Java or ABAP skills.

Thanks to all 3 of you.... Shaik, Vikrant and Santosh. I downloaded by SAP eBooks and all set to start studying; so let's see if I can manage my career well or just disappear.

Thanks,

Prasenjit

[santhu_gowdaz]

If you are going to learn UI5. Look at this blog-