Hi
I have two years of dotnet development experience . I am trying to move into SAP. Whats the best to opt for in Netweaver i.e Java or ABAP or there are any opportunities for this on dotnet platform. Which should be most promising for future. Googling I came to know Java is giving a backseat to ABAP. Do comment.
Regards SJ
I'm not sure if any of this is what you are after but there is a .NET SAP Connector that you can use to access SAP BAPIs and remote function from .NET programs. We use this to interface all our custom applications with our SAP system. This also may help you transition in learning SAP as you can connect to pre-built BAPI's (essentially business API's) with a language that you already know to understand tables and object structures. It will also allow you to build a web application that interfaces with SAP without having to deal with SAP and/or ABAP.
The ABAP language is fairly easy to learn. The difficult thing about mastering SAP programming is understanding the business functionality of the various components. Many SAP programmers seems to focus on one functional area and master the programming aspects of it. HR/Payroll is usually considered to be one of the more difficult areas to learn.
The team I lead is actually in charge of all the .NET custom systems and the SAP ERP system so I feel your pain to a degree.
Good luck
Hello
You got experience with a language that can interact with SAP, so you can begin by this part, and then learn the ABAP as part of your work. You will however need to learn ABAP, as you can not always rely on an ABAPper to explain you why/how somme data are calculated/retrieved on the ERP. Also being able to code you own functions is useful (still, pay attention to the company ABAP coding standard :) )
I'm both a technical expert in HR and the house 'expert'/team leader in SAP Portal application developpement (Java), and someone that can look at both side of the connection (even if not an expert in both domain) is a very useful person on a developpment team.
if you go the java way, you have to know that, in addition to learning the language, you'll probably have to learn the "standard" java framework for SAP, webdynpro. While it's very powerfull, its also full of quirk.
Sap Developper Network possess a forum for both .NET and java where you can ask your questions.
regards
Guillaume
Probably Java and ABAP have a good future in SAP. I would however go for ABAP since the majority of functionality in SAP is written in ABAP:
ABAP is not going to be replaced by Java any time soon. In the beginning a lot of people thought that this is going to happen, but there is simply too much ABAP code and too many APAB developers around for that to happen.
Can any one tell me whether to choose .NET or ABAP as a career start if I have both the options.
Regards, Varun