I'm basically a Java programmer. Three years ago, I was trained on ABAP by our organization and did two projects on ABAP, upgradation and production support. Until now I didn't have any development experience. My question is, how can I proceed further? I know the things but I'm not confident on myself as I don?t have dev. experience on ABAP. As a Java person, is it good to learn NetWeaver or better be an ABAPer and learn BW stuff like that? I'm totally confused. Please help.
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Hannah Smalltree, Editorial Director
Well, if you've read my past columns, you know that I always say "go where your project takes you." It's not clear to me from your question what your project is asking of you now, and generally I don't even answer questions without knowing that as I can't really help you if I don't know your options. General career advice is only so useful, but speaking in generalities, the answer is that the best SAP technical consultants have a range of skills that are *not* mutually exclusive. In other words, ABAP, BW, and NetWeaver are not separate technical areas, but overlapping areas where you could benefit from having skills in all three. Of course, since NetWeaver is SAP's technical platform of the future, you should start there, but BW 3.5 is fully integrated into NetWeaver, so how can you say where BW ends and NetWeaver begins? A good next step for you is simply to study up as much as you can on SAP product knowledge. This will help you clear up a lot of your confusion. In fact, I learned a lot about NetWeaver recently by reviewing a free SearchSAP NetWeaver webcast and PowerPoint ( Demystifying NetWeaver). There is a lot of good information out there -- the more you learn, the more informed your career choices will be.
This was first published in October 2004