Study of SAP R/3 Architecture

Submitted by:
Manjinder Singh Sohi
mss046000@utdallas.edu

Outline

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

Manjinder Singh Sohi

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 used:ABAP/4
Netweaver:ABAP/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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Issues:No Cache

ICM(Internet Connection Manager)

ICM uses the threads to parallelize the load that comes up.

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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.

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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..

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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.

Manjinder Singh Sohi

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.

Manjinder Singh Sohi

References

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw04/helpdata/en/84/549
53fc405330ee10000000a114084/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/0130280
844.pdf[date accessed April 20,2004]
www. sapfans.com/[date accessed April 20,2005]

Manjinder Singh Sohi