[30] in sapr3-soft
Re: Issues regarding backend platforms and databases
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Larry Dresser)
Thu Feb 6 01:52:50 1997
To: sapr3-soft@MIT.EDU
Date: 17 Jan 1997
From: Larry Dresser <ldresser@realtime-usa.com> (by way of SAP Moderator <sap-request@realtimeusa.com>)
This message is being forwarded by way of the moderator:
On 15 Jan 1997 18:30:47 -0500, "Alan Vance" <favance@visi.net>
(by way of SAP Moderator <sap-request@realtimeusa.com>) wrote:
I have a similar question. We are just beginning a SAP Pilot. We have
already rolled out an NT 4.0 network and have some expertise. We
(Newport News Shipbuilding) have of our data in an IDMS/Mainframe
Environment. We also have most of the Human Resource Information in DB2
on the Frame. We have used DEC in the past (VMS/RDB) for a variety of
projects. As a Shipbuilding company, we have a large engineering staff.
The engineers use Silicon Graphics and are moving towards NT
Workstations as well.
What platform would you choose to implement the SAP Database Software on
(Oracle, DB2, or SQL Server)? What hardware platform would you use
(IBM/SP or AIX or 390, DEC/ALPHA, HP, Others)?
DB platform choice will depend a lot on your relationships with
hardware vendors (ie, how much they charge you), and somewhat on
data and transaction volume, as well as what your organization
feels comfortable supporting. SAP looks pretty much the same on
any UNIX machine, and is only slightly different on NT. I don't
know anything about the AS/400 version. (By the way, in some of
our testing, Sun hardware did very well against the IBM SP.)
Most of the very largest implementations run on Unix, though
there are some exceptions (Microsoft would be one obvious
example).
Most Unix SAP implementations use Oracle as the database, though
some use Informix. NT implementations use mostly SQLServer and
some Oracle. The choice will depend on what you feel most
comfortable supporting
Assuming most of the clients will be NT 4.0/95 and we want implement
Thin
Clients (NCs?), what would the Application Server's and the Internet
Server's software and hardware environment look like?
You don't really have a choice about the weight of the SAP
client. On NT or 95, you can run the standard SAP client (called
the SAPGUI). It's heavier than a terminal emulator, and lighter
than a Web browser. You can also run the SAPGUI on a Unix
workstation under XWindows. If you are running a true NC, then
you would have to use the newly-released Java version of the
SAPGUI, which would run in any Java-compatible browser. (Of
course, you could run the Java SAPGUI on an NT or 95 machine if
you like.)
If this is a small implementation (fewer than about 20 users),
you could probably run the application server and the database
server software on a single machine. As you get larger
implementations, you would break the application server out to a
separate machine, then add additional applications servers
(scaling the DB server up as you go) or use bigger application
servers. Theoretically, you can mix hardware platforms among
application and DB servers, but I haven't tried it, and SAP
discourages it.
If you add the Internet application server, you add a couple of
tiers. First, you need to run SAP's Internet Transaction Server
(ITS) which currently only runs on NT. This server communicates
with the application server and could presumably run on the same
machine, if the app server is NT. Then you need a standard WWW
server (eg Netscape or Microsoft) which communicates with the SAP
ITS and passes HTML on to the user's browser. This would run on
your platform of choice, and again, could share a machine with
the ITS and/or the application server (ignoring Internet security
concerns). Now, note that the Internet components are not
necessary for any normal intra-company SAP implementation, not
even the ones that run the Java SAPGUI in the browser.
Any ideas on any of this would be greatly appreciated?
Alan Vance
Newport News Shipbuilding
favance@visi.net
