SAP(System Application & Product)It stands for Systems, Applications and Products in Data Processing. Over the years, it has grown an devolved to become the world premier provider of client/server business solutions for which it is so well known today. The SAP R/3 enterprise application suite for open client/server systems has established a new standards for providing business information management solutions.

The main advantage of using SAP as your company ERP system is that SAP have a very high level of integration among its individual applications which guarantee consistency of data throughout the system and the company itself.

•The main advantage of using SAP as your company ERP system is that SAP have a very high level of integration among its individual applications which guarantee consistency of data throughout the system and the company itself.

In a standard SAP project system, it is divided into threeenvironments Development, Quality Assurance and Production.

•The development system is where most of the implementation work takes place.•The quality assurance system is where all the final testing is conducted before moving the transports to the production environment.• The production system is where all the daily business activities occur.

SAP software uses a three-tiered architecture. In a three-tiered architecture there are three nodes:

•Presentation Layer or Client

•Business Logic or Application Server

•Database Server

Presentation Layer:-The presentation layer contains the software components that make up

the SAP GUI (graphical user interface). This layer is the interface between the SAP System and its users. The System uses the SAP GUI to provide an intuitive graphical user interface for entering and displaying data. The presentation layer sends the user’s input to the application server, and receives data for display from it.

Application Server:-The actual SAP software runs on an application server. Client node simply

displays the image of the screen that is actually being produced on the application server. It is important to note the application server only runs SAP software. Data is not stored in application server

Database Server:-

Data is stored on a separate machine called database server. Presentation

layer communicates with application server to retrieve the data to be displayed to the user. Application server in turn communicates with the database server to write data to the database and to retrieve data from the database. The database server would be hosting a database management system like Oracle.

Architecture of the SAP web AS

Purpose of SAP web based application server is to implement both server based and client based application.

Component of SAP web AS:

The Internet Communication Manager (ICM) sets up the connection to the Internet. It can process both server and client Web requests. It supports the protocols HTTP, HTTPS, and SMTP. The SAP Web AS can behave as a Web server or as a Web client

The dispatcher distributes the requests to the work processes. If all the processes are occupied the requests are stored in the dispatcher queue.

SAP Jco(SAP java connector) is stabiles the communication between java environment and ABAP environment.

The ABAP Work Process executes the ABAP code.

The message server exchanges messages and balances the load in the SAP System.

SAP Modules

Financial Accounting (FI): An important core module, designed for meeting all the accounting and financial needs of an organization. Within this module Financial Managers as well as other Managers within your business can review the financial position of the company in real time.

Controlling (CO): Represents the company’s flow of cost and revenue, offers all the support information needed by Management for the purpose of planning, reporting and decision making. Decision making can be achieved with a high level of information reducing drastically risks. Basically It is a management instrument for organizational decisions

Sales & Distribution (SD): The SAP sales and distribution is part of the logistics module that support your customers, starting from quotations, sales order and all the way towards billing the customer. It is tightly integrated with the MM (Material Management) and PP (Product Planning) functional modules. It allows companies to input their customer sales price, check for open orders and forecast etc.

Material Management(MM): Is the materials management module of the SAP. This module is used for Procurement Handling and Inventory Management. Materials management (MM) is integrated with other modules such as SD (Sales & Distribution), PP (Product Planning) and QM (Quality Management). Materials management is used for procurement and inventory management.

Product Planning (PP): The purpose of PP&C (Production Planning and Controlling) is to ensure that manufacturing runs effectively and efficiently and produces products as required by customers. The Production Planning module of SAP takes care of Master data needed like Bill Of Materials, Routings and Work Centers and stores it in one separate component.

Quality Management (QM): Quality management is a method for ensuring that all the activities necessary to design, develop and implement a product or service are effective and efficient with respect to the system and its performance. Quality management is the comprehensive solution that supports the company throughout the product life cycle and along the supply chain.

Plant Maintenance (PM):oriented to cover all maintenance activities, supporting the Planning, Programming and Implementation, with emphasis on the availability of equipment, staff costs and Assurance, guaranteeing so the state of the art of database and optimization. SAP’s Plant Maintenance comprises of the following activities such as inspection, to measures and establishes the actual condition of a technical system, preventive maintenance to measures and maintain the ideal condition of a technical system, repair to measures and restore the ideal condition of a technical system and other measures that need to be taken using the maintenance organization.

Human Resources (HR): It deals with various activities done in the human resource department of an organization, such as, Personal administration, personnel development, training and event management, payroll etc. This module enables customers to effectively manage information about the people in their organization, and to integrate that information with ”other SAP modules” and external systems.

Project System (PS):Created to support the planning, control and monitoring of long-term, highly complex projects with defined goals .Projects are generally part of the internal processes of a company. To be able to control all tasks in project execution, you need an organizational form that is specific to the project and which is shared by all departments involved.