SAP Introduction & SAP Architecture

Introduction to SAP R/3

SAP R/3 is developed in Germany by SAP-AG in 1992. SAP stands for "Systems Applications and Products in Data Processing". R/3 is a runtime environment and predesigned large business applications which is developed by SAP’s 4GL(4^th Generation Language) – ABAP.

ABAP stands for "Advanced Business Application Programming". The main purpose of R/3 is to provide suite of tightly integrated business applications for large business corporations.

Architectures in Software Engineering

Three types of Architectures are available in Software Engineering they are,

One-tier: If the client and server programs run in one computer, it is called as one-tier.

Ex: C Programming.

Two-tier: If the client and server programs run in different systems it is called as two-tier.

Ex: Client/Server,

Client/Server is nothing but two programs talking to each other.

Program1 requests program2 for the information, and program2 replies to the program1.

Three-tier: If a program can be both client and server, then it is called as three-tier. Means a program can request the information from other programs as well as it can replies to other programs requests.

Ex: SAP R/3 Architecture.

SAP R/3 architecture is based on three-tier architecture.

It consists

  Presentation server

 Application server

 Database server

Presentation server: Actually is a program named sapgui.exe. It is installed in the user workstation. Presentation server displays the user interface to accept the input from the user. It sends the requests to the application server to be processed. The application server sends the results back to presentation server.

Application server: It is a set of execuatable programs to process the requests from the presentation server. When we start the application server all the executables start together and when we stop the application server all the executables stop together. The application server exists to interpret the ABAP/4 programs and the programs do not run in presentation server. When we run the ABAP/4 program in presentation server it runs in application server and it requests the data from the database server. Once it gets the data from the database server it process the program and sends results back to the presentation server.

Database server: database server is also a set of executables that accepts the database requests from the application server. These requsets are passed to the database(RDBMS) and gets the required data from the database. Then it sends the data to the application server. Database and database servers can be installed in one system or in different systems.

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Posted in: SAP Basics, SAP R/3 Architecture