Who and-or what is SAP How popular is it Wow!.pps

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12/7/2013 1John

Introduction to SAP

By John C(8th Batch)



12/7/2013 John 2

Who and/or what is SAP? How

popular is it? Wow!• SAP the company was founded in Germany in 1972

by five ex-IBM engineers. In case you’re ever asked,SAP stands for Systeme, Andwendungen, Produktein der Datenverarbeitung which - translated toEnglish - means Systems, Applications, Products in

Data Processing. So now you know! Beingincorporated in Germany, the full name of the parentcompany is SAP AG. It is located in Walldorf,Germany which is close to the beautiful town ofHeidelberg. SAP has subsidiaries in over 50

countries around the world from Argentina toVenezuela (and pretty much everything in between).SAP America (with responsibility for North America,South America and Australia) is located just outsidePhiladelphia, PA.



12/7/2013 John 3

How popular is it

• The original five founders have been so successfulthat they have multiplied many times over such thatSAP AG is now the third largest software maker inthe world, with over 17,500 customers (includingmore than half of the world's 500 top companies).

SAP employs over 27,000 people worldwide today,and had revenues of $7.34 billion and Net Income of$581 million in FY01. SAP is listed in Germany(where it is one of the 30 stocks which make up theDAX) and on the NYSE.

• There are now 44,500 installations of SAP, in 120countries, with more then 10 million users!



12/7/2013 John 4

What made this company so

successful?

• Back in 1979 SAP released SAP R/2 (which runs onmainframes) into the German market. SAP R/2 wasthe first integrated, enterprise wide package and wasan immediate success. For years SAP stayed within

the German borders until it had penetratedpractically every large German company. Lookingfor more growth, SAP expanded into the remainderof Europe during the 80's. Towards the end of the80's, client-server architecture became popular and

SAP responded with the release of SAP R/3 (in 1992).This turned out to be a killer app for SAP, especiallyin the North American region into which SAPexpanded in 1988.



12/7/2013 John 5

Advantage of using SAP as your

company ERP system• The main advantage of using SAP as your company ERP system is

that SAP have a very high level of integration among its individualapplications which guarantee consistency of data throughout thesystem and the company itself.

• SAP is a table drive customization software. It allows businesses to

make rapid changes in their business requirements with a commonset of programs. User-exits are provided for business to add inadditional source code. Tools such as screen variants are provided tolet you set fields attributes whether to hide, display and make themmandatory fields.

• This is what makes ERP system and SAP in particular so flexible. Thetable driven customization are driving the program functionalityinstead of those old fashioned hard-coded programs. Therefore, newand changed business requirements can be quickly implemented andtested in the system.



12/7/2013 John 6

What is the Purpose of R/3?• The sole purpose of an R/3 system is to provide a suite of tightly

integrated, large-scale business applications.

• The standard set of applications delivered with each R/3 system arethe following:

• These applications are called the functional areas, or applicationareas, or at times the functional modules of R/3. All of these terms aresynonymous with each other.

• PP (Production Planning)• MM (Materials Management)• SD (Sales and Distribution)• FI (Financial Accounting)• CO (Controlling)• AM (Fixed Assets Management)• PS (Project System)• WF (Workflow)• IS (Industry Solutions)• HR (Human Resources)• PM (Plant Maintenance)• QM (Quality Management)



12/7/2013 John 7

SAP

• The SAP system is a collection of software that performs standardbusiness functions for corporations. The system has become verypopular because it provides a complete solution to standard businessrequirements such as manufacturing, accounting, financial management,and human resources. It incorporates the concepts of enterprise resourceplanning (ERP) and business process reengineering (BPR) into an

integrated solution for business applications.• ERP Software

• Short for Enterprise Resource Planning software. ERP softwareaids and controls the ERP management system, which is a systemthat integrates and automates all facets of business operations.

This includes planning, manufacturing, and sales, while morerecent ERP software products encompass marketing, inventorycontrol, order tracking, customer service, finance and humanresources as well.



12/7/2013 John 8

SAP runs on any platform

• The SAP R/3 system runs on virtually any hardware/software platformand can use many different database management systems. One SAPsystem might be based on an IBM AS/400 running OS/400 using DB2;another might be based on a Sun Solaris (a dialect of Unix) using theOracle RDBMS; still another might be based on an IBM PC runningWindows NT using SQL Server. While SAP can be run with many

different database products, nearly 85% of SAP customers nowchoose Oracle because of its dominance in the database marketplace.

• The SAP R/3 code is written in an interpretive language called ABAP.

• (ABAP is a German acronym that, loosely translated, means"Advanced Business Application Programming.") ABAP is very similarto COBOL in its syntax.



12/7/2013 John 9

SAP R/3 System Architecture



12/7/2013 John 10

SAP

The three layers are:

• Presentation layer :The PC-based GUI interface thatis used by the end-user community.

•

Application layer :The SAP application servers thatservice requests for data and manage the interfaceto the presentation layer.

• Database layer :The actual DBMS that communicates

with the application servers to fulfill their requestsfor data.



12/7/2013 John 11

SAP

• A piece of "middleware" called BASIS links theapplication to the database and the operatingsystem.

• BASIS is most commonly associated with the GUIinterface to SAP (called SAPGUI), and the BASISAdministrator is an SAP professional who isresponsible for configuring the SAP environment,including the GUI screens and the SAP application

servers.



12/7/2013 John 12

SAP

• SAP end users log into their PCs using SAPGUI,and are connected to a specific application server.

• This application server has pre-establishedconnections with the Oracle database, and itservices all requests for data. As I mentioned earlier,the access language for Oracle data is SAP ABAP.

• ABAP generates Oracle SQL (Structured QueryLanguage), which is then used to service the enduser's request for data. The communication betweenthe application servers and the database, and

between the client and the application servers, isTCP/IP.



12/7/2013 John 13

The application server-SAP

• While SAP uses the generic term appl icat ion server to define a computer that receives connections fromSAP clients, the actual connections are managed bySAP dialog servers.

• A dialog in stance is a software program that isrunning the SAP kernel (similar to an Oracleinstance), and it is the job of the dialog instance toexecute the ABAP programs and manage therequests for data and services. While there isgenerally a one-to-one mapping between an

application server and a dialog instance, it ispossible to have more than one dialog instance onan application server.



12/7/2013 John 14

The central instance- SAP

• The central ins tance is a concept that is unique toSAP. The central instance is a combination ofhardware and software. It contains a physical server(the application server) and numerous software

components, including a message server, adatabase gateway (a pre-established connectionbetween SAP and Oracle--or another database), andvarious update, enqueue, dialog, and spool facilitysoftware. In most generic SAP architectures, there

are numerous application servers but only a singlecentral instance.



12/7/2013 John 15

Work processes

• Any computer is capable of running one or moreapplication servers. The main purpose of a dialoginstance is to intercept requests for work from theSAP clients and to execute ABAP programs toservice the requests for data. In addition, a dialog

instance contains a dispatcher task and a set ofwork processes (WPs). The WPs are Unix tasks thatcan easily be identified by logging on to the Unixserver and entering the following command:

• ps -ef|grep dw

• All SAP WPs contain the string "dw" (an acronym forDialog Work) in their process names.



12/7/2013 John 16

The SAP Dialog instanceconfiguration



12/7/2013 John 17

SAP

• The WP is the task that is charged with executing theapplication's tasks. As such, a WP consists of anABAP language interpreter and processor, a taskhandler, and a means of connecting to the Oracledatabase. SAP defines several types of work

processes, as follows:• Dialog (DIA) : Executes interactive dialogs• Batch (BTC) : Executes background tasks• Update (UPD) :Manages database updates•

Enqueue (ENQ) :Manages resource locks• Spool (SPO) :Manages data formatting and printing



12/7/2013 John 18

SAP

• The WPs can be viewed from a variety of places viaSAPGUI, the SAP management tool. In SAPGUI, eachscreen has a name, and the SAPGUI screen calledSM50 shows the currently executing WPs on a dialog

instance



12/7/2013 John 19

SAP

• SAPGUI transaction SM50 displaying SAPwork processes



12/7/2013 John 20

SAP

• The SAP system admin istrator , commonly called theBASIS adm inistrator , controls the number of WPsthat are defined to each application server.

In addition, the BASIS administrator can define "opmodes" that control the number and type of WPs foreach application server. For example, the BASISadministrator might define a day mode consisting ofmore dialog WPs for interactive sessions, and anight mode consisting of more batch WPs for the

evening batch processes. These op modes areautomatically switched by SAP according to thetimetable specified by the BASIS administrator.



12/7/2013 John 21

Oracle/SAP Naming Conventions

• In order to maintain control over a vast set ofapplications, SAP has devised a convention fornaming common components. These conventionsare more than suggestions; in many cases, deviationfrom the naming conventions may cause some

management components of SAP (e.g., SAPDBA) tofunction improperly. Thus, it's very important that allSAP systems follow these naming conventions.



12/7/2013 John 22

SAP

• One firm rule relates to the Oracle table and indexnames. Obviously, the SAP table structures andtable names cannot be changed without changingthe ABAP programs that access these tables, andSAP strongly urges customers not to alter the Oracle

entities without the express consent of SAP AG.• However, the Oracle administrator does have

control over the naming of some Oracle entities(tablespaces and datafiles) and their placementwithin the filesystems and disk devices. The main

areas of concern for the Oracle administrator are theOracle SID name, the name and location of theOracle initialization file, and the names of the Oracletablespaces and datafiles



12/7/2013 John 23

The Oracle SID in SAP

• SAP mandates that the Oracle SID (SystemIDentifier), specified in Unix and some otheroperating systems as ORACLE_SID, always beginwith an uppercase "SA," followed by a single

alphanumeric digit or a single uppercase alphabeticcharacter. Thus, the SID may have the values SA0-SA9 or SAA-SAZ. These are the only allowablechoices for Oracle database SIDs



12/7/2013 John 24

The Oracle Initialization File(INIT.ORA) in SAP

• Within an SAP system, the Oracle initialization filemust exist with a specific name in a specificdirectory; if it does not, the SAPGUI and SAPDBAutilities will not work properly.

• Note, however, that the actual name of this file in

your system will be INITsapsid.ORA , where sapsid isthe Oracle SID for your database (described in theprevious section) and has the name you've specifiedfor it.For example, if your Oracle SID is D23, your

initialization file will have the name initD23.ora . InSAP systems, the intialization file must be located inthe directory /oracle/<sapsid>/dbs. example, /oracle/D23/dbs .



12/7/2013 John 25

SAP

• Within the INIT.ORA file, you must follow the

SAP conventions for parameters summarized.

INIT.ORA Parameter Filesystem Destination

USER_DUMP_DEST /oracle/<sapsid>/saptrace/usertrace

LOG_ARCHIVE_DEST /oracle/<sapsid>/saparch/SAPSID_

BACKGROUND_DUMP_DEST /oracle/<sapsid>/saptrace/background

AUDIT_FILE_DEST /oracle/<sapsid>/rdbms/audit

CONTROL_FILES /oracle/<sapsid>/sapdata-nn/cntrl1.data1



12/7/2013 John 26

Oracle Tablespaces in SAP

• In an SAP system, Oracle tablespace names alwaysbegin with the string "PSAP" and end with a "D"(data tablespace) or an "I" (index tablespace). Someof the common SAP tablespaces are PSAPCLUD,

PSAPLOADD, and PSAPDICD.• A standard SAP system contains only a handful of

tablespaces. These tablespaces are designed tocontain all of the SAP tables, and are defined as apart of the default SAP installation.





12/7/2013 John 28

SAP

• SAP has segregated the Oracle tables intotablespaces classified as a transaction tablespace, aBASIS tablespace, or an SAP system tablespace.Note that the SAP application has a system

tablespace (called PSAPDICTD), just as the Oracledatabase has a system tablespace.





12/7/2013 John 30

SAP

• In an operational SAP database, these tablespaceswill experience the highest read-write activity andwill grow very large as your end users load SAP withtheir business data. Thus, you'll need to monitor

these tablespaces very closely, since they may filland cause the entire SAP application to stop



12/7/2013 John 31

BASIS tablespaces

• The BASIS tablespaces include BTABD, STABD, DICT, LOAD,PROT, and SOURCE. SAP uses these Oracle tablespaces tostore data that is used to perform basic SAP system functions.For example:

1. PROT : Holds the output from ABAP reports while they arewaiting to be printed, and contains spool, converter, and logtables.

2. SOURCE and LOAD :Contain the ABAP source code for reportsand screens. In an SAP system, remember that ABAP is run inan interpretive mode, and the source code is gathered fromthese tablespaces at runtime for interpreting.

3. DICT: Contains the ABAP data dictionary, and consists of SAPmetadata; in this sense, the DICT tablespace is very similar tothe traditional Oracle SYSTEM tablespace.



12/7/2013 John 32

System tablespacesThe most important SAP system tablespaces are POOL, CLU, and DOCU:• POOL :Used to store the SAP system pool tables. These are similar to

the master data tables found in the STAB (transaction) tablespaces,but SAP considers them too small to require their own Oracle tables.The items from the POOL tablespaces are generally buffered andloaded into the memory of the dialog instance, so POOL is not heavilyaccessed except at SAP startup time.

• CLU :Contains SAP cluster tables. Unlike Oracle clusters, SAP clustertables are stored into Oracle tables with LONG RAW datatypes. Thedata within the LONG RAW columns are used by SAP as subtables,and each row within an SAP cluster table may contain data that iscompletely unrelated to the next row in the table. These pseudo-tablespresent a challenge to the Oracle administrator, especially when theymust be reorganized, because you can't use Oracle's CREATE TABLEAS SELECT command with tables that contain LONG RAW columns.

Consequently, reorganizations of the CLU tables must be performedwith Oracle's slower Export/Import utilities.

• DOCU :Contains the document tables, including the sapscript andsapfind tables. This is a relatively small tablespace with fewer than 30tables.



12/7/2013 John 33

Oracle Files in SAP

• SAP AG suggests that when a new tablespacecontains a single table, the tablespace name be apermutation of the table name. For example, thetable named VBAP could be moved into a tablespace

with any of the following names: PSAPVBAPD,VBAPD, or VBAP. An SAP purist would preface thetablespace name with PSAP and end the tablespacewith the letter "D." This is helpful in order to beconsistent with the other SAP naming conventions,

and it can also be helpful when using SAPGUI toview tablespace information.



12/7/2013 John 34

Oracle system files• While many standard Oracle configurations generally

follow Oracle's Optimal Flexible Architecture (OFA)standard, SAP has changed this standard somewhat, inan effort to create a "flat" file hierarchy



12/7/2013 John 35

Oracle system files

• Note that $ORACLE_HOME is set to the same valueas /o rac le/<saps id> , and all of the Oracle databasesoftware is located directly beneath this directory.For example, the Oracle executables are always

located in /o rac le/<saps id>/b in .



12/7/2013 John 36

Oracle datafiles

• Within SAP, Oracle database files are namedsomewhat differently from the way they're named intraditional Oracle databases. The default SAPinstallation uses datafile names in which the prefixmatches the tablespace name. For the filename

suffix, rather than using a db f suffix, SAP requiresthat datafiles contain the datan suffix. In this way,the Oracle datafile called psappooli .data3.



12/7/2013 John 37

Oracle indexes - SAP

• SAP also follows a standard for index naming. AllOracle index names default to eight characters inlength; they always begin with the table name, endwith a number, and use between one and three

underscore characters in between. All indexes thatend with a zero represent the primary key indexesfor the table, and all nonzero numbers representsecondary indexes. For example, you will be able totell that VBEP___0 is the primary key index for the

VBEP table, and that VLPMA__1 is the secondaryindex for the VLPMA table.



12/7/2013 J h 38

SAP Filesystems on Unix

• In addition to the required Oracle filesystems, some SAP-specificfilesystems are found on most of the SAP application servers. Thesefilesystems are used to hold certain Unix files that are required forSAP to function in the Unix environment. These include the SAPexecutable programs, SAP configuration files, and other SAP system-related datafiles, as follows:

• /usr/sap/trans :This directory contains the common transportdirectory, .sapconf , as well as other SAP and Oracle configurationfiles. For distributed Oracle systems, this directory may also containthe master tnsnames.ora and sqlnet.ora files.

• /sapmnt/<sapsid> :This directory stores system-wide files for SAP,

including executables, global files, and profiles.

• /usr/sap/<sapsid> :This directory stores instance-specific files foreach SAP dialog instance.

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Who and-or what is SAP How popular is it Wow!.pps