Introduction

‘The SAP Web Application Server (Web AS) is the web services infrastructure for all current versions of SAP ABAP Enterprise, and SAP xApps, mySAP solutions and any SAP J2EE-based application. It is also the underlying technology for SAP Enterprise Portal, SAP Business Information Warehouse, and SAP Exchange Infrastructure, and a key component in the SAP Enterprise Services Architecture and SAP NetWeaver. Therefore, managing the SAP Web AS is crucial for ensuring business continuity in the SAP environment. This can be easily achieved using eG Enterprise.

The graphic below shows the components of the Web Application Server (see Figure 1).

Figure 1 : The SAP Web AS Architecture

The components and their tasks are described below:

• 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.
• The ABAP work process executes the ABAP code.
• The SAP Gateway makes the RFC interface between the SAP instances available (within an SAP System and beyond system boundaries).
• The message server exchanges messages and balances the load in the SAP System.
• In the Java component of the SAP Web AS there are the components Java Dispatcher, Server Process, and Software Deployment Manager. The Java dispatcher receives the client request and forwards it to the server process with the lowest capacity usage. If there is already a connection to the client, the request goes to the server process that processes this client. The server processes actually execute the J2EE application. The Software Deployment Manager (SDM) is a tool with which you can manage and deploy software packages (Software Deployment Archives (SDAs) and Software Component Archives (SCAs)) that you receive from SAP.