ITS - Web Enabling for the SAP R/3 Enterprise

Today, the power of the Web and its ability to deliver e-business solutions throughout and beyond the enterprise has been acknowledged by most companies. As Web initiatives are undertaken, many companies have also come to realize the unique challenges associated with the Web environment in terms of real-time business process integration while avoiding duplicative efforts. The World Wide Web offers a unique way of extending R/3 transactions and customizing the interface to R/3´s comprehensive business logic to meet the needs of diverse user constituencies.

The SAP Internet Transaction Server converts SAP R/3 screens into HTML format making it possible to access SAP systems with user-friendly Web technology. Through release 4.6DC4 and today 6.10, a continuous improvement lifecycle, which includes additional functionality enhancement that streamlines and simplifies this process - SAP GUI for HTML.

SAP GUI for HTML automatically maps the screen elements in R/3 transactions to HTML using HTMLBusiness functions available within the SAP Internet Transaction Server. As a result, SAP Internet Transaction Server can dynamically generate an HTML version of an R/3 screen that is similar in layout.

Introduced with ITS 4.6C, also shipped with ITS 4.6DC4 and 6.10, ITS Flow Logic is an implementation model for Internet applications that allows you to define the dialog flow outside the SAP system as flow logic. Applications developed using this model consist of linked HTML pages that can be populated with data retrieved from the SAP system or any other external system.

The main advantages of the flow logic model are

1.       Its ability to support stateful and stateless applications,

2.       Performance improvement, and

3.       Easy modification of application dialog flow.

For example, stateless applications reduce the memory consumption of the application server, so that the overall application performance increases in comparison to the standard Web application model using R/3 transactions. Stateless function modules can also be called in any order, so the customer can easily change the dialog flow without making any changes to the R/3 application.

Latest Developments

With the ITS 6.10 release, the functionality of SAP GUI for HTML is closer to that of SAP GUI for Windows. We now have movable modal popups, context menus (which display the functions available on the screen), improved keyboard support  – in particular the F1 and F4 help keys are now usable, and editable Grid Control has been added.

Rendering performance is improved and the network footprint is smaller. Non-interactive SAP Graphics are supported using SAP Internet Graphic Server (IGS). The new ITS setup tool simplifies patch management and the updating of multiple ITS instances. ITS instances can be cloned. You can customize your installation scripts and start unattended installation. If an installation is interrupted, it can be resumed after corrective measures have been taken. 

The ITS Administration tool can check that the installation and provides detailed information about the files. Automatic restarts can be scheduled for each ITS instance, with an option to restart only if no user is logged on. User sessions can be killed. The services for starting ITS Administration have been renamed: the service now called admin (previously called adminremote in ITS 46DC4) allows you to manage instances hosted at remote and local machines.

For more detailed information regarding the new features in ITS 6.10 Release, see SAP Note 419297 in SAPNet.

Recent efforts with ITS 4.6C4 development have concentrated on Frontend Printing. The major focus was to provide software which is Stable, Avaliable and Scalable. New features such as ITS Watchdog, Enriched administrative and monitoring tools were introduced to keep track of  highly scalable ITS clusters. Additionally enhancements such as, Introducing new trace file to make existing once better readable is a remarkable monitoring feature. Moreover with many other new features, it also has an improved patch production.  

Efforts with ITS 4.6D were being focused on reducing the limitations of the SAP GUI for HTML functions such as file upload/download. HTML page compression between ITS AGate and the Web browser has also been developed and will be released with ITS 4.6D. The compression technique makes use of a compression algorithm that is also part of the major browsers and makes it unnecessary to install additional components to take advantage of this feature.

To enhance the platform availability of the ITS, SAP has taken the first steps towards providing a WGate for the Apache Web server on both Windows NT and LINUX platforms. This means that the ITS now supports a third Web server-specific protocol Apache Module in addition to ISAPI (Microsoft Internet Information Server) and NSAPI (Netscape Enterprise Server).

As of ITS 4.6D, the WGate architecture has been changed completely. The new WGate configuration means that you no longer have to attach each virtual ITS to a separate virtual Web server. Furthermore, one WGate can now communicate with more than one AGate, and these AGates can either be installed on the same machine or different machines.

Spotlight - New Features ITS 6.10 and ITS 4.6D (SAP Notes)

• 0419297 SAP Internet Transaction Server (ITS) 6.10 News
• 0321426 SAP Internet Transaction Server (ITS) 4.6D News C4