One of the most exciting (and equally dreaded) books for ABAPers has undergone a major overhaul. Or, according to the author Horst Keller, a complete rewrite.

“This book is the sequel to ABAP Objects: An Introduction to Programming SAP Applications from the SAP PRESS series. Instead of producing a reworked third edition of the Introduction, we have written a new book … In this book, we are offering our readers a compendium of modern ABAP programming and of the key possibilities of the ABAP Application Server in SAP NetWeaver. Modern ABAP programming means programming with ABAP Objects. Contrary to the previous book, ABAP Objects are no longer treated as an addition to classical ABAP, but rather as the underlying programming model.

Whilst I would say that this is probably not the most eagerly awaited book within the SAP Developer Community (no pun intended), it certainly is one of the most important book releases for SAP Development Consultants since -well- the release of earlier version of the book. Since the first version has been released, a lot has changed in SAP Development land. New WAS, WebDynpro, SOA – to name but a few areas.

One thing that always annoyed me about the original book was that almost 50% of it covers basics of the ABAP programming language, which was a pretty redundant part for me.

Sounds like Keller didn’t include this part in his latest, re-written book on ABAP OO. It is also worth noting that this March 2007 release comes along (just like its predecessor) with a SAP Netweaver Testdrive (MiniSAP), which saves you from downloading it from SDN.

Gentlemen, please start your engines !

[UPDATE] One thing I obvioulsy forgot about was that the books has already been released in German (also makes it EUR 10.00 cheaper).