SAP, started in 1972 by five former IBM employees in Mannheim, Germany, states that it is the world's largest inter-enterprise software company and the world's fourth-largest independent software supplier, overall. The original SAP idea was to provide customers with the ability to interact with a common corporate database for a comprehensive range of applications. Gradually, the applications have been assembled and today many corporations, including IBM and Microsoft, are using SAP products to run their own businesses.


ABAP is a programming language for developing applications for the SAP R/3 system, a widely-installed business application subsystem. The latest version, ABAP Objects, is object-oriented programming. SAP will run applications written using ABAP/4, the earlier ABAP version, as well as applications using ABAP Objects.