SAP Netweaver Layers and its offerings

This article answers following queries:

1)    What is SAP Netweaver and what it offers?

2)    What are the different SAP Netweaver layers?

3)    Explain SAP Netweaver layers?

SAP Netweaver and its Offerings:

SAP Netweaver AS is the logical result of further developing SAP application server Technology (earlier called SAP Basis), where by special attention is paid to web applications.

SAP Netweaver offers :

i)              A reliable, convenient and user friendly development environment

ii)            A reliable and thoroughly tested runtime environment for running ABAP and Java programs

iii)           Support for various open standards like HTTP, HTTPS, SOAP, SMTP, SSL, SSO, X.509, Unicode, HTML, WML and XML

iv)           Support for platform independence ( i.e. running on different Operating systems/databases)

v)             High Scalability

vi)           A framework for executing complex business processes that meets highest security standards

vii)          Multi level architecture ( i.e. Presentation level, Application level and Database levels)

viii)         Support for various user interfaces like SAPGUI, Browser etc

   SAP Netweaver Layers:

SAP Netweaver is based on a technology using industry standards and can be enhanced with development tools such as Java, J2EE, Microsoft .Net and IBM Webshphere.

Netweaver consists of following 4 layers

Ø    People Integration

Ø    Information Integration

Ø    Process Integration

Ø    Application Platform

People Integration :

People integration makes sure that employees or customers of an organization,  have quick access to information to perform their activities efficiently.

For example:

i)              Using SAP Enterprise Portal system, customers  can access the required information at ease and perform their tasks.

ii)            Using SAP Netweaver Mobile Integration technology, customers can access the information related to a company from a mobile and thus perform their tasks easily

Information Integration :

Information integration layer provides access to all structured and non-structured information of an organization/company.

For example :

i)              SAP Netweaver Systems like  Business Intelligence- BI, Enterprise Portal (Knowledge Management- KM ), and  Master Data Management(MDM) areas provide comprehensive options for uniform access to distributed information in a company.

Process Integration :

Process Integration ensures that business processes work across system borders in a landscape of heterogeneous systems. In other words, it allows communication between different system types.

For example :

i)              SAP XI or SAP PI system plays a crucial role and connects SAP and Non-SAP systems. It mainly uses open standards from XML and Java for that.

Application Platform :

SAP Netweaver application server provides proven infrastructure for running business applications that are based on ABAP or Java. In addition to runtime environment for ABAP or Java, the respective development tools are also available for you to implement your own applications.

Mainly, Application platform supports

• Open standards
• Browser based access
• Web services

In addition to these 4 layers, SAP Netweaver offers

i)              Lifecycle Management

ii)            Composite Application Framework (CAF)

Life Cycle Management supports following aspects for entire solution

i)              Design

ii)            Development

iii)           Deployment

iv)           Change management

Along with this it meets the requirements for security, design, modeling and testing.

Composite Application Framework (CAF) is

i)              Integrated into SAP netweaver

ii)            Enables SAP and its partners to create new applications

iii)           Offers tools, frameworks, rules and methods to create applications based on business processes