to develop in java. However it will be good for ABAP Developers to learn java.
ABAP is not a replacement for any thing and at the same time no other language is a
replacement for ABAP. FYI, ABAP is no more an ABAP/4. It is widely extended
with the introduction of Web Application Server starting from release WAS 620.
In Object Oriented Paradigm ABAP is the only langauge that goes very near to all the
properties of OOP concepts even comparted to JAVA and C++ starting from release
WAS 630. You can developed and extend web applications using ABAP. It is much
much more than what we see from R/2 and R/3 3.X releases...
There is nothing to worry about it. Yes SAP is introducing J2EE platform as an
alternate to make an implementation faster as in the market there are many JAVA
developers compared to ABAP resources.
More than this, ABAP is the SAP proprietary language. Except R/3 kernel, every
application/transaction including BASIS is written in ABAP. I don't think SAP is
that foolish to replace ABAP with some thing else. Look at the development news
in SAP AG official web site for more info. One might need to know Java and JSP for
developing mySAP portals but starting from SAP NetWeaver (which is planned to be
released officially by the next quarter this year) you can developed
heterogeneous portals using ABAP itself...
Hope the above clarifies how ABAP is moving a head in the programming era.