QUOTE(LightEnchanter @ Oct 5 2011, 12:17 PM)
ABAP & functional is subset of SAP?
SAP is the giant ERP software that covers from Finance, Stock Management, Sales, Manufacturing, HR....and many more.
Due to scale of the SAP, no one person can do all in this industry. In a typical project, you will need people who will play different roles. These roles are likely linked to their SAP skills.
Functional consultants are typically people who knows business process as well as sap functionality in one of the areas, eg : MM, SD, FICO...etc. They will be the one who design the business process required for a particular client. THese people will also do some settings (call configuration in SAP) to for a particular client. Good functional consultants are the ones with deep business knowledge in some industries and able to advice the client what is the best practice.
If the client requirement cannot be done using configuration settings, then this is when ABAP comes in. ABAP consultants will write codes using ABAP language to create either new programs or enhancement to SAP.
Hope the brief explaination helps. There is a lot more ...to this.