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Rating: 
Summary: The BEST and MOST PRACTICAL ABAP/4 book I've come across.
Review: I am currently involved with an installation project of SAP in several countries and I have had the dubious pleasure of getting exposed to the ABAP code. If you are involved with an SAP project you know the software will contain some bugs and you will also want some customization. Unfortunately, most of the programmers out there do not know your business and at times it is frustrating bridging the gap to meet the customization needs.So the more of the programming language that you know the easier the communication will be. For example, the programmer will give you a program and if it does not meet your needs it is very helpful in being able to read through the program logic and understand what the program is doing. This book does an excellent job in explaining the commands, the syntax, giving practical examples, and highly stresses the practical rules for optimizing the program. If you have the ability to write your own programs and play around in a development system this book is the one with which to start. It will give you the basics and beyond and is very easy to read and follow, especially with the examples. Again, I highly recommend this book from a practical reference and also as a text book to learn how to program in SAP.
Rating: 
Summary: Not enough.
Review: I attended the ABAP academy and received certification. Prior to the academy I read this book. I found it to be better than nothing but other students found the ABAP Objects book to be more current. The ABAP Object book also provides a demo R3 system. This allows the student to practice at home and be more creative. Win 2000 and MS SQL 2000 are required for the demo version. Go with ABAP Objects.
Rating: 
Summary: Patchy and poorly structured
Review: There are lots of good things about this book, but it is very patchy, not particularly well executed, and full of mistakes, omissions and misprints. The main use for this book would be for someone to read prior to attending an ABAP course - in particular BC400. Reading this book beforehand would certainly give a headstart in some of the concepts. However, this is a book for someone who already has some wide experience in programming and is definately not for the novice programmer. There are plenty of weak areas: security is not mentioned, despite being fundamental to ABAP, dialog programming is ignored, internal table coverage is sketchy. Parts of the workbench such as the organizer are not covered. Many of the examples are trivial and easy to understand. These offer the most comprehensive explanations, whilst other more complex areas are skimmed over with a useless explanation. Many, many, typographical errors exist. Some of the figures are missing or appear in the wrong place. A lot of the formatting of examples is wrong. Having said all that, if you need to try to grasp the general features of ABAP before going on a formal course, the book is quite useful. If you were hoping to learn ABAP from this book, forget it.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Reference
Review: This book is a great primer for those who have some general programming knowlege, and who are self starters. I have gone through three other similar books, and found this to be the most useful. It will get you started, but you will quickly yearn for more meat and examples, which can be found in the next book in the series.
Rating:
Summary: Better books available
Review: Though it does say introduction to ABAP I guess I was expecting more, for instance the book dosn't even review the ABAP editor until a three page appendix in the back of the book. Many pages of the book are wasted repeating program code but never really reviewing what is going on. There never really is a mention of how to manipulate tables in this book so if you need to work with anything other then internal tables (who doesn't) you'll have to find the information elsewhere.
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