Study of SAP R/3 Architecture

Outline
What is SAP?
SAP R/3 Architecture
Components of SAP R/3
Features of SAP R/3
Issues
Conclusion
What is SAP?
SAP (System Application and Product) is the name of the biggest European
German Software company as well as the name of software itself.
The company was founded in 1972 by the five IBM employees.
SAP R/3 Software has been developed using ABAP/4 as a programming
language.
SAP is the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system that aims to integrate
all the different modules(SD,MM,CO,HR etc) in the company.The integration
results in consistency of data throught out the system and the company as a
whole.
As of 2005, SAP employs over 28,900 people in more than 50 countries.
SAP R/3 Architecture
SAP R/3 is one of the main product of SAP,where R
stands for RealTime and the number 3 relates to three
tier application architecture(Data base,Application
Server and Client).
Most of the business in todays world runs on SAP R/3
system.About 80% of the companies implemented this
software.
SAP R/3 Architecture (Continued)
Components of SAP R/3 Architecture
Internet communication Manager(ICM)-set up connection to
internet. Supports protocol HTTP,SMTP.
Dispatcher distributes the requests to the work processes. If all
the processes are occupied then the requests are stored in
dispatcher queue.
ABAP Work Process executes the ABAP code.
SAP gateway makes the RFC interface between SAP instances
available.
Message server exchanges the messages and balances the load.
Features
Scalability
Open Standard Support
Robustness
Feature-Scalability
The architecture is such that it can be easily scalable if
the load at one server is increased.
As application is independent from the data base and
the presentation layer then the servers can be
replicated in order to balance the load.
Gateway component using RFC adds many SAP servers
to it.
Feature-Supports open standards
SAP R/3 architecture is designed to be support most of
the open standard available today.It can run on
UNIX,NT,AIX etc.
Customization language used:ABAP/4
Netweaver:ABAP/4 and JAVA
Robustness
SAP R/3 is highly robust as a whole.
All the components work in the coordinated manner.
So they will work as a whole in order to solve the
unexpected scenario.
Issues
No cache memory in ICM
In SAP R/3 architecture ,clients treated as dumb
terminals.
Complex Architecture
No Support for other languages.
Issues:No Cache
ICM(Internet Connection Manager)
ICM uses the threads to parallelize the load that comes up.
Issue:R/3 models desktops as dumb terminals
Today desktops are very powerful and they can be
used to do a large part of computation.
But in SAP,there is other way round.
Issue:Complex Architecture
Today the technology is changing so fast that the code
of SAP R/3 architecture becomes large and more
complex.
So the possibility of falls behind and not keeping up
with the current technology..
Issue:No support for other languages.
SAP R/3 architecture only supports ABAP/4 language.
New architecture from SAP-Netweaver supports JAVA
also.
But still support for other popular languages C/C++ etc
left.
In the Nut-shell
Even though SAP R/3 architecture supports
scalability,security etc but still there are many issues
that are to be resolved.
Issues:No cache,customization problem,No
Programming language support(C/C++),Complex
architecture,treat clients as dumb.
References
http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw04/helpdata/en/84/54953fc405330ee100000
00a114084/content.htm[date accessed April 20,2005)
Original SAP R/3 release 6.20 (2003) Library Documentation.
SAP-Help UTD-SOM(SAP Users Group)
http://www.hp.com/hpbooks/prentice/chapters/0130280844.pdf[date
accessed April 20,2004]
www. sapfans.com/[date accessed April 20,2005]