Section 15.5. What is the role of the SAP NetWeaver Application Server?

15.5. What is the role of the SAP NetWeaver Application Server?

SAP NetWeaver AS is foundational to all of the rest of SAP's applications. SAP NetWeaver Portal is Java code that runs on top of SAP NetWeaver AS. Even the mySAP Business Suite, which is written in ABAP, runs on SAP NetWeaver AS.

Although it does much more than a traditional app server, in addition to all of its other functionality, SAP NetWeaver AS is a certified Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) 1.3-compliant app server that provides all the standard app server features, including load balancing, security, and database support via Open SQL.

SAP NetWeaver AS allows companies to extend their solutions by exposing and integrating web services according to their development skills and needs independent of the technical environment. This includes:

• Full support for web services standards (WSDL, SOAP, UDDI, WS-I, and so on)

• An efficient development, testing, and error correction cycle

• A consistent architecture and identical feature sets for the two development environments used in SAP NetWeaver (ABAP and Java)

• Support of web services development for creating new applications and for service enabling existing applications and standard SAP interfaces

SAP NetWeaver AS offers developers comprehensive support on the client side, from client proxy generation to integration with dynamic and comprehensive UIs created with Web Dynpro. The Web Service Framework supports both ABAP and Java and offers all the tools needed to enable standard interfaces (BAPIs, RFCs, Enterprise JavaBEans [EJBs], and Java classes) as web services, as described in this chapter and in Chapter 16.