Chapter Excerpt:

2.1 SAP System Architecture

Many enterprises currently use SAP products to control production planning, purchasing and
logistics, warehouse management and inventory management, production, vendor management,
customer service, finance, personnel management and other basic business activities. As
mentioned in Chapter 1, the mySAP Business Suite includes various business modules and
numerous sector and cross-sector solutions.

A distributed system of this nature requires a common infrastructure, which is provided by SAP
NetWeaver and, in particular, by the SAP Web Application Server (Web AS)—the successor to
SAP Basis. This type of system architecture is subdivided into three layers, which make up the
basic services of a business application system: the presentation layer, the application layer, and
the database layer. Each of these layers performs certain functions and constitutes a part of the
overall system landscape.

The presentation layer enables the user to interact with the relevant application. This interface is
typically called the GUI (Graphical User Interface) and it is used to execute the application logic,
utilizing the other layers in the combined infrastructure. Applications are executed in the
application layer while the data to be processed is managed by the database layer. The
distribution of system functions over several layers means that an SAP system is extremely
scalable. The separation into layers means that the overall load can be distributed over several
servers. The functions of a single layer can also be distributed over multiple servers. This is
made possible by, among other things, the network communication of the participating servers.
In the days of SAP R/3, we spoke of one-, two-, or three-level architecture, depending on
whether the services of the SAP R/3 system ran on one, two, or more servers. With one-level
system architecture, all processing tasks occur on a single server. Two-level configurations are
usually implemented with special presentation servers, which are responsible for preparing only
the graphical interfaces. This is usually performed in such a way that the end users use their
workstation (usually a Windows PC) as a presentation server via which they can access data that
is stored and processed on a separate server. With a three-level configuration, a separate server is
used for each service, that is, the presentation layer, the application layer, and the database layer
run on different machines. The application layer, in particular, can be distributed over several
application servers to counteract a possible high load caused by end users, dataexchange
processes, or background processing.

Another prerequisite for the layers is that they should offer a high degree of flexibility with
regard to hardware and operating-system environments. mySAP Business Suite is a standard
software, so you must be able to use it on different platforms. Because the SAP system
architecture supports a wide range of operating systems and hardware platforms, SAP tries to
remain as platform-independent as possible. A Java version has been written for the SAP GUI,
for example, which means that it can be run on almost all operating systems.

The application logic of mySAP components can run on numerous operating systems and
hardware platforms. It should be noted, however, that the application programs cannot be run on
different platforms without some amount of customization. An environment must be created that
will allow for programs to be independent of the operating system. This is achieved using the
SAP Web AS, or its predecessor, SAP Basis.

SAP Web AS is a later development of the SAP Application Server technology. New
technologies were added to process or forward HTTP requests, for example. This is the task of a
new process -- the Internet Communication Manager (ICM). It can communicate via the Internet
as a server and as a client.

Figure 2.2 shows the architecture of the earlier SAP Basis compared with the new SAP Web AS
architecture. You can see the Internet communication enhancement in the form of the ICM.

Like SAP Web AS, SAP Basis provides the runtime environment for all SAP applications and
ensures that the application is optimally embedded in the system environment. It defines a stable
architecture framework for system enhancements and includes tools for the administration of the
entire system. Additional tasks include the distribution of resources and providing system
interfaces.

In contrast to the operating system, this runtime environment is a mass of parallel cooperating
processes. On each application server, these processes include the dispatcher and a number of
work processes, depending on existing resources. Special work processes can be defined
according to the services for which the application is to be used, for example, an application
server can be used exclusively for dialog processing. Therefore, we will define only dialog work
processes on this server. You should use a different application server for background
processing. Batch work processes are defined there for background processing. Communication
between the dispatchers of an SAP system is done via the message server. There is always only
one message server per SAP system. Communication between systems (R/3, R/2, external
systems, and so on) is made possible thanks to the SAP Gateway.