ABAP stands for Advanced Business Application Programming. It’s the primary programming language used to build and customize applications on the SAP platform. SAP is a massive software system used by large companies to manage everything from finance to logistics, and ABAP is the glue that holds it all together and allows developers to tailor it to specific business needs.

Developed in the 1980s, ABAP has evolved significantly. It started as a procedural language, similar to COBOL, designed for creating reports. Today, it’s a modern, powerful language that helps run some of the world’s largest corporations. Think of it as the specialized toolkit for building on top of the powerful SAP engine.