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ABAP - Advanced Business Application Programming

Sunday, May 11, 2008

ABAP - Application Servers

R/3 programs run on application servers. They are an important component of the R/3 System.
The following sections describe application servers in more detail. The individual components are:

1) Work Processes : An application server contains work processes, which are components that can run an application. Each work process is linked to a memory area containing the context of the application being run. The context contains the current data for the application program. This needs to be available in each dialog step. Further information about the different types of work process is contained later on in this documentation.

2) Dispatcher : Each application server contains a dispatcher. The dispatcher is the link between the work processes and the users logged onto the application server. Its task is to receive requests for dialog steps from the SAPgui and direct them to a free work process. In the same way, it directs screen output resulting from the dialog step back to the appropriate user.

3) Gateway : Each application server contains a gateway. This is the interface for the R/3 communication protocols (RFC, CPI/C). It can communicate with other application servers in the same R/3 System, with other R/3 Systems, with R/2 Systems, or with non-SAP systems. The application server structure as described here aids the performance and scalability of the entire R/3 System. The fixed number of work processes and dispatching of dialog steps leads to optimal memory use, since it means that certain components and the memory areas of a work process are application-independent and reusable. The fact that the individual work processes work independently makes them suitable for a multi-procecssor architecuture. The methods used in the dispatcher to distribute tasks to work processes are discussed more closely in the section Dispatching Dialog Steps.

4) Shared Memory : All of the work processes on an application server use a common main memory area called shared memory to save contexts or to buffer constant data locally. The resources that all work processes use (such as programs and table contents) are contained in shared memory. Memory management in the R/3 System ensres that the work processes always address the correct context, that is the data relevant to the current state of the program that is running. A mapping process projects the required context for a dialog step from shared memory into the address of the relevant work process. This reduces the actual copying to a minimum. Local buffering of data in the shared memory of the application server reduces the number of database reads required. This reduces access times for application programs considerably. For optimal use of the buffer, you can concentrate individual applications (financial accounting, logistics, human resources) into separate application server groups.


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