Developer Guide: Understanding the ABAP RESTful (RAP) Programming Model

Published: 02/March/2020

Reading time: 17 mins

To help ABAP developers meet the business needs of their organizations and make coding more efficient, SAP provides programming models. These models have changed over the years as requirements and technologies have changed, and now, with the user experience taking center stage in a constantly evolving business landscape, a flexible and efficient development model that optimally supports SAP Fiori, SAP HANA, and sophisticated technologies has become a pressing need. To meet this need, SAP now offers the ABAP RESTful programming (RAP) model. Included with SAP Cloud Platform ABAP environment, the RAP model provides an intrinsic approach to building SAP Fiori applications in ABAP that are optimized for SAP HANA and run both in the cloud and on premise.

This article introduces ABAP developers to the basic principles and philosophies of the RAP model so they can hit the ground running and quickly start taking advantage of its benefits. You will learn:

• How and why the ABAP programming model has evolved over the years
• The components of the RAP model and how the model works
• What development using the RAP model looks like through a step-by-step example scenario