What is the future of SAP WebDynpro: ABAP or Java?

One of the hottest debate in SAP Technology area is that of future of WebDynpro. This quesiton will determine career path of several SAP professionals.

What is SAP's preferred approach? What is the technology SAP is delivering its current and future WebDynpro applications?
SAP's preference matters a lot and can be a key factor in determining the future of WebDynpro.

SAP's Historical preference
SAP's historical preference was clearly for Java. SAP first came up with Java WebDybpro framework. Java gurus were smitten by this WebDynpro framework and were too eager to develop applications using this user friendly framework. SAP's move towards Java gave ABAPers nightmares. ABAP professionals started shivering thinking about their careers and expected SE80 to become a history. The huge availability of Java developers meant that SAP's developer world will soon be baptized in to Java and ABAPers would find themselves out of place.

SAP built several standard applications is WDJ. (ESS and MSS). So ABAPers' nightmare was looking more real.

But all was not yet lost for ABAPers. WDJava still had to use ABAP in the form of RFCs. Core R/3 was still in ABAP and SAP would need to invest significantly if it had to convert its core into Java and this was unrealistic.

Then came the Knight rider for ABAPers. SAP introduced WebDynpro for ABAP somewhere in 2006. This added to the chaos and confusion althogh it was a light at the end of tunnel for ABAPers. More over, SAP did not provide any official direction on WebDynpro development and the WebDynpro started searching for the SAP insider information. But it turned out that SAP itself was confused. People from Palo Alto labs said Java is the future, but those from Germany labs said ABAP is the future.

Webdynpro Java framework is nearly 18 months mature compared to Webdynpro ABAP. So WDJ had an advantage initially. But It is fading as the time is progressing. Now SAP started delivering its recent standard applications in ABAP. So the balance started tilting towards ABAP. Being part of SAP, ABAP had many advantages compared to Java in building WD. More over Java had many disadvantages when compared with ABAP.

With the advantage ABAP has, currently ABAP seems to be the future of WebDynpro.

View an animated story line of triangular love story between WD, ABAP and Java

Advantages/difference between ABAP and Java WD.

Comprehensive Comparison

Here is a valuable SAP Press book on Webdynpro ABAP.