Study of SAP R/3 Architecture

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• Study of SAP R/3 Architecture
• 
  Submitted by
• 
  Manjinder Singh Sohi
• 
  mss046000_at_utdallas.edu

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Outline

• What is SAP?
• SAP R/3 Architecture
• Components of SAP R/3
• Features of SAP R/3
• Issues
• Conclusion

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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.

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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.

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SAP R/3 Architecture (Continued)
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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.

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Features

• Scalability
• Open Standard Support
• Robustness

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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.

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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 usedABAP/4
• NetweaverABAP/4 and JAVA

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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.

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Issues

• No cache memory in ICM
• In SAP R/3 architecture ,clients treated as dumb
  terminals.
• Complex Architecture
• No Support for other languages.

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IssuesNo Cache

• ICM(Internet Connection Manager)
• ICM uses the threads to parallelize the load that
  comes up.

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IssueR/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.

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IssueComplex 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..

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IssueNo 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.

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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.
• IssuesNo cache,customization problem,No
  Programming language support(C/C),Complex
  architecture,treat clients as dumb.

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References

• http//help.sap.com/saphelp_nw04/helpdata/en/84/54
  953fc405330ee10000000a114084/content.htmdate
  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/013028
  0844.pdfdate accessed April 20,2004
• www. sapfans.com/date accessed April 20,2005