SAP Netweaver Overview

SAP Netweaver is the technical foundation for running SAP Business Suite applications.  Additionally, SAP Netweaver provides a rich set of components and client tools for numerous use cases such as building composite applications, data warehousing and building integration scenarios.The intent of this blog is to provide a brief historical overview of its inception, strategy, capabilities and where possible links on future direction as it pertains to S/4HANA and SAP's cloud strategy.

History & Strategy of SAP Netweaver

Originally called SAP Basis Layer (technology stack) the goal was to separate business & technology capabilities into a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) for business applications.

Introduced in 2004 - first release (WebAS, ABAP, Java)

• WebAS (Web Application Server) - extends Basis technology stack to the web by integrating SAP Internet Transaction Server (ITS).  
• Advance Business Application Programming (ABAP) - an interpreted programming language that runs in the SAP ABAP runtime environment.  
• Java - Java based solution, such as J2EE running in a SAP Java based runtime environment.  

SAP Netweaver is now foundation for Business Suite components providing the following capabilities:

• Foundation Mgmt. - App Server, Identity Mgmt., Solution Manager
• Middleware - enables sharing data and support x-application business processes
• Business Process Management & Business Rule Management - business process / rule modeling and execution.
• Information Management - Master Data Management, Business Warehouse, Lifecycle Management
• Team Productivity - Netweaver Portal
• Composition - development environment for building SAP Netweaver applications

Foundation Management

• SAP Netweaver Application Server - run Business Suite (ABAP Server, Java Server).  Visit ABAP Platform for SAP S/4HANA 1909 for updated information as this technology stack is scheduled to sun set per SAP's road-map.  Developers interested in trying out the ABAP language and toolset should visit ABAP Platform.
• SAP Netweaver Identify Management - manage user identify and access to SAP and non-SAP application.  Visit SAP Identity Management Overview for additional information on future direction.
• SAP Solution Manager - Manage SAP implementations and operations (statistics collection)
• SAP Landscape Virtualization (LVM) - is a powerful landscape administration solution to automate SAP system operations, including end-to-end SAP system clone/copy/refresh operations.  SAP LVM is now called SAP Landscape Management (SAP LaMa).

Middleware

SAP Netweaver provides provides the following middleware capabilities:

- Connect to SAP systems and external systems

• RFC - Standard SAP function calls
• IDOC - Standard SAP interchange document format
• File / FTP - local and remote file systems, including FTP servers
• HTTP(S):  Servers using the web protocol
• SOAP - Web services
• JMS - Messaging services
• JDBC - Relational databases
• SMPT / POP3 / IMAP - Email servers

- Process Integration (PI) - consists of core components that model, design, automate, and integrate processes in one or more application systems.  PI also enables business to business processes.  Originally known as XI (Exchange Infrastructure) PI is now part of Process Orchestration (PO).

Business Process Management & Business Rule Management


Netweaver Business Process Management (BPM) enables you to model a process and execute the steps within the process.   Clearly defined business rules can be incorporated into processes from the outset. The tight integration with Business Rules Management (BRM) enables business users with no coding skills to create and modify rules using decision tables.  BPM & BRM consists of the following components:

• Process composer - used by architects and developers to create and test business process models and rules
• Rules Server - Contains the functions for Business Rules Management
• Process Server - Contains the function for Business Process Management
• Process desk - accessed by process users to perform their specific BP steps.

BPM & BRM along with PI are now part of PO.  Visit What is SAP PI (PO) – Ultimate Guide for an in-depth overview and future direction.

Information Management

• SAP Netweaver Master Data Management (MDM) - used to consolidate, cleanse and synchronize global data within a heterogeneous application landscape.  MDM is scheduled to sun set as per SAP's road-map and therefore customers are migrating to SAP Master Data Governance (MDG) a business suit component of SAP S/4HANA.
• SAP Netweaver Business Warehouse (BW) - is a scalable enterprise data warehouse
• SAP Information Lifecycle Management (ICM) - enables companies to efficiently comply with legal and regulatory mandates

Team Productivity

• SAP Netweaver Portal - web interface and role-based views.  The SAP Portal product is following the SAP's cloud strategy.  For additional information on transitioning visit Transitioning from SAP Enterprise Portal to SAP Clout Platform Portal: FAQs.
• SAP Netweaver Enterprise Search (ES) - utilized Text Retrieval and Information Extraction (TREX) engine to search documents. Building block for data and knowledge warehousing use cases.

Composition

Early SAP NetWeaver embraced the concept of building composite applications to address the shortcoming of classical business applications that focused on manually entering data and reporting on that data. While this approach was efficient at data collection, analysis of business process data and automation it tended to fall short of when involving users in collaborative and iterative processes.  To build composite applications SAP Netweaver introduced the following development environment:

• SAP Netweaver Composition Environment (CE) -  Java development environment to build and run composite applications based on SOA principles.
• SAP Netweaver Developer Studio - Open source Eclipse-based tool used to develop Enterprise Edition (J2EE)-based, multi-tiered business applications.
• SAP Netweaver Visual Composer - used to create ad-hoc "freestyle" user interfaces based on drag-and-drop technology.

Subsequent releases of SAP Netweaver have integrated SAP NetWeaver CE into the SAP Netweaver platform.  SAP Netweaver Visual Studio is now part of the Composition Environment Platform.