SAP Netweaver Architecture Internals

Here is a concise yet in-depth explanation of SAP Netweaver from an inside-out, hands-on approach without the sales hype and repetition typical of tutorials. Topics are linked to certification exam content and other web pages. Detailed diagrams of the infrastructure are accompanied by sequenced descriptions that make the complexity easy to understand. Cross-reference tables plainly cut through the confusion between Perspectives and Project Types.

valid:
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SAP Certification Exams and Training
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SAP Netweaver Architecture Internals
SAP R/3 Tablespaces
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SAP R/3 User and Server Administration
SAP R/3 Monitoring and Performance Tuning
SAP GUI Emulation for Load Testing
SAP R/3 ABAP Programming
SAP Portal

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Site Map  
About this site  

SAP's Glossary,
help.sap.com
SAP's Netweaver Product Home Page
SAP's OKP
Technorati: NetWeaver

Getting Started Developing Netweaver

Technical Consultant Exam Content

Here are links to exam content for the SAP Certified Technology Professional - Platform Technology - SAP NetWeaver 7.0 C_TEP10_04s 3 hr. 40 ques.

Conceptualize complex processes into customer prominent solutions. Based on professional application and advanced analysis qualification, customer business requirements can be recognized and transferred into concepts and blueprints of prominent customer solutions in 40%	Workload Analysis [ADM315]
	E2E - Root Cause Analysis
	Adaptive Computing and other virtualization techniques
	Sizing and system landscape planning
	Upgrade Planning and Performing upgrade to SAP ECC 6.0 [ADM326]
	Planning and executing heterogenuous System Copies [TADM70]
	Unicode Conversion
	E2E - Change Management
Build solutions by independently researching valid implementation options. Based on profound understanding and deep application skills, project requirements can be transferred into solid customer solutions in 40%	High Availability
	Solution Monitoring (Solution Manager Integration) [SM100]
	System Optimization for NW Components (XI, BW, Portal, TREX)
	Java Software Logistics and Solution Manager Integration ("CTS P [ADM225]
	Data Management (strategies for reducing data volume)
Accomplish solutions for defined project tasks. Based on profound knowledge and basic understanding, identified tasks can be performed during system implementation, configuration, and testing in the areas of 20%	Know SAP Services (Go Live, Early Watch, etc.)
	Advanced Monitoring topics [ADM106, ADM107]
	Data Archiving

Netweaver Versions

SAP NetWeaver provides an integration framework like TIBCO. Netweaver was built to operates in a SOA (service Oriented Architecture) framework of self-contained services that communicate with each other and are not dependent on the context (or state) held by other services. Loose coupling makes services adaptive and flexible. According to SAP's Enterprise Services Architecture (ESA) blueprint, services are interoperable, collaborative, and process-centered composite applications with requests from service consumers and responses from service providers.

Netweaver 2003 (Interface/J2EE Engine version 6.20)
Netweaver 2004 (Interface/J2EE Engine version 6.40) introduced a unified Web Application Server (WAS), web services, enterprise services, XI, BI, and MDM.

Netweaver 2004s (Interface/J2EE Engine version 7.0) is about composite apps (xApps) [Release Notes] the foundation for
SAP NetWeaver Portal 7.0.

SAP NetWeaver 7.1 (Interface/J2EE Engine version 7.1) enables mobile devices and business process modeling (BPM) platform:

Composition Environment (CE),
Enterprise Services Repository (ESR), and
NetWeaver Process Integration (PI).

ABAP and Java are called two "personalities" of Application Servers.

• AS-Java runs the KM application.
• AS-ABAP is only required for Documentation, Manuals, and Training Material Management.

Mastering Enterprise SOA with SAP NetWeaver and mYSAP ERP (Wiley, Oct. 2006) by Scott Campbell and Varmsi Mohun

Netweaver Admin. Class Outline

Netweaver EP Class Outline

NetWeaver Product Integration

• Web Services infrastructure and wizards are part of the SAP Web Application Server and developer tools used for exposing Web Services

• SAP NetWeaver Enterprise Portal (SAP NW EP) unifies role-based secure access to day-to-day work and information resources (meeting room, discussion forums, shared documents in file cabinet, classifications, e-mail lists, etc.)
  • SAP NetWeaver Portal (SAP Portal) artifacts are built using
    • Portal Content Studio (PCS) to create iViews content on a Portal Catalog hierarchy stored in the Portal Content Directory (PCD) and
    • Portal Development Kit (PDK) for coding Java and .NET C# and VB.NET application logic.
  • SAP Portal runtime running within WAS manages Roles, iViews (the smallest unit of UI-based information) Pages (a set of coherent iViews), and Worksets (a set of pages of related tasks)

• SAP XI (eXchange Infrastructure)
• SAP BW - Business Information Warehouse
• SAP MDM - Master Data Management (data cleansing)
• Visual Composer (VC) is the modeling tool for creating analytics applications and other UIs based on services
• ARIS (ArchitectuRe of Information Systems) for NetWeaver is a whole framework for the description of business processes, which include modeling methods, with a corresponding meta-model and a modeling tool provided as a client (for publishing from a local database) or internally within SAP's WebAccess.

  The ARIS Business Designer creates event-driven business process models (including Orchestrations and Services) stored in the XI Integration Repository. ARIS models applications, systems, functions, events, rules, groups, roles, objects, connectors.

  (The SAP Process Office licensed this technology from IDS-Scheer) The ARIS Filter for SAP synchronizes ARIS with SAP Solution Manager through SAP Java Connectors (JCO).

• SAP NetWeaver for workflow include CAF-GP (Composite Application Framework Guided Procedures) and WebFlow to automate tasks and drive process flow using Composite Application Services (CAS) based on Enterprise Services Architecture (ESA). These run packaged composite applications (PCAs) such as SAP Collaborative Cross Applications (xApps) Controlled by UME (?) Permissions.

  A GP process consists of Actions (somewhat similar to a Java interface for business processes) implemented by Callable Objects, and Blocks.

• TREX search engine
• JDO (Java Data Objects) can store Java domain model instances directly in a database.
• SQLJ enables Java programs to access a database using embedded Structured Query Language (SQL) statements. It is supported by SAP NetWeaver for J2EE development.
• Remote Function Calls (RFC) (of functions to be executed in a remote system) is the standard SAP interface to communicate with SAP backend systems and non-SAP systems.

• SAP MI - Mobile Infrastructure

SAP NetWeaver user interfaces include:

• Web Dynpro (following a Model-View-Controller (MVC) paradigm like Java Struts) is used for building UIs based on models and reusable Developments Components (DC) built into the framework
• HTML Business for Java (HTMLB),
• ABAP Dynpro and
• ABAP Business Server Pages (BSP).

Note from the 2004s TroubleShooting Guide that its use of SAP GUI 6.40 (SP 8) requires this patch for IE7.

The ultimate goal of any system is to enable excellence in:

• Relationships (better decisions)
• Products/Services (information)
• Operations (Processes) across systems and organization boundaries

SAP Forum: Documentation & Guidelines

ASUG (American SAP User Group)

SAP Netweaver Development Concepts and Architecture

These SAP E-Learning Classes include step-by-step Flash demos:
NW001_52 (Technology Sol.Pow. by SAP NW)
NW100_62 (SAP Web AS Overview E-Learning)
NW200_62 (SAP WebAS Server User Config.)
NW300_62 (SAP WebAS Basic System Mainten.)
NW310_62 (SAP WebAS Server System Maint.2)
NW400_62 (SAP WebAS Server Develop. Overv)
NW500_62 (SAP WebAS Database Interaction)
NW600_62 (SAP WebAS Devel. Analysis&Tools)
NW900_62 (SAP WebAS User Authoriz. Admin)


Certification of over 1,800 3rd-party software packages as "Powered by NetWeaver" by SAP Integration and Certification Centers (ICCs) conducted by VeriTest/Lionbridge.

Software Solution Partner Catalog

SAP Architecture

Server Machines

One big change is that since Netweaver 04 passwords are now case sensitive.

"Business Process Platform"

Business Warehouse (BW) / Business Intelligence (BI) functionality is built into the NetWeaver 2004s engine,

Format	Artifact	Netweaver Tool
-	Integration Scenarios	Scenario Editor
BPEL	Integration Processes	Process Editor
XSLT Java	Mappings	Mapping Editor
XPath	Context Objects	Condition Editor
WSDL	Message Interfaces	Data Type Editor

SAPNSP_00 service

Netweaver CE (Composition Environment) Repository, Directory, Registry

With the SAP NetWeaver CE (Composition Environment) add-on product:

To define services, NWDS accesses the ESR (Enterprise Services Repository or ES Repository) which are populated by SAP with a global data type catalogue based on Core Components Technical Specification standards.

To consume services (point-to-point), NWDS accesses the Services Registry which contains data imported from the ESR.

System Landscape Directory is where software components are maintained.

The ESR is accessed through Java WebStart UI client Enterprise Services Builder.

Landscape Hierarchy

Here is the hierarchy of a landscape:

Solution (such as ECC, MDM, SolMan) are duplicated by

Role (Development, Quality Assurance, Production)
System (identified by a 3-letter SysID such as "SM4")
Instance (identifed by an Instance ID) contains
SAP processes:
msg_server.EXE (MessageServer)
disp+work.EXE (Dispatcher)
igswd.EXE (IGS Watchdog)
J2EE Processes:
J2EE Dispatcher
SDM Server
J2EE Server

Memory Structures

With version 7 SAP integrated ITS into the Web Application Server. Activate ITS with these steps:

1. Start Tx SE80. Select 'Internet Services'. Type in 'System'. In the Object Window right click 'System' -> Publish -> Complete Service. Wait for the message: Object published successfully. Site: Internal
   Repeat the above for Internet services SHUFFLER and WEBGUI.
2. Start Tx SICF and select 'default Host' and activate the required services. NB. Do not Activate all services, since that will cause performance and security issues. /default_host/sap/bc/gui/sap/its/webgui
3. Use Tx RZ10 to configure these following parameters:

   icm/server_port_0 = PROT=HTTP,PORT=80$$
   icm/host_name_full = .com
   ms/server_port_0 = PROT=HTTP,PORT=81$$
   login/create_sso2_ticket = 2
   login/accept_sso2_ticket = 1
   
   Logon to the SDN and search for web GUI.
   
   

Load Balancing

SAP JVM

SAP Note 723909 “Java VM settings for J2EE 6.40/7.0” describes recommended Java VM settings to avoid out of memory (OutOfMemoryError) or Out of swap space error for standard SAP Java applications (EP, XI, CRM, etc.) running on SAP J2EE 6.40/7.0.

J2EE Engine 6.40 SP7 corresponds to NetWeaver'04 SP Stack 04.

SAP's ConfigTool Note 710146

Independence from JVM vendors (Sun, IBM, etc.) is a strategic goal of SAP, so the SAP JVM container is developed by SAP rather than Sun, IBM, etc.

Therefore, at the cost of not having some optimizations in Sun Java 5/6, SAP is more likely to produce a JVM that has the same bahavior across all OS platforms.

SAP Enterprise Portal 6 KM (Knowledge Management) requires JAVA_HOME to be set to /usr/j2sdk1_3_1_06.

J2EE and Java

2004s Virtual Machine Container

2004s introduces a Virtual Machine Container (VMC) that pools and dynamically assigns a Java VM (with a local Java heap) to each user session. The number of VMs and their properties are specified using SAP transaction SM53 (VMC System Administration).

The execution of applications (anwendung) on the Java VM integrated in the ABAP work process is only intended for components developed by SAP.

Shared Closures (the transitive shell of Java objects in a common Java class pool available to all VMs) are copied (serialized) into the local heap for update or mapped for read-only access.

shared Locks synchronize VM's access to shared objects at the instance level.

However, VMs access a and share data and memory with ABAP work processes, which improves speed of communications between Java and ABAP.

Java objects can be moved across process boundaries and shared by processes. This enables efficient session failover.

An out-of-process VMC RFC driver is used to communicate among different work processes.

All RFC types are transferred by means of CPI-C or TCP/IP. They constitute a form of gateway communication.

JCo (Java Connector) API via JNI (Jave Native Interface) to RFC calls to ABAP.

blog

IBM Rational Performance Tester Extension for SAP Solutions

SAP ABAP Performance Tuning Tips & Tricks Introduction among SAP Tutorials at thespot4sap