SAP System Architecture

Many enterprises currently use SAP products to control production planning, purchasing and logistics, warehouse management and inventory management, production, vendor management, customer service, finance, personnel management and other basic business activities. The mySAP Business Suite includes various business modules and numerous sector and cross-sector solutions.
A distributed system of this nature requires a common infrastructure which is provided by SAP Net-Weaver, in particular, by the SAP Web Application Server(Web AS)- the successor to SAP Basis. This type of system architecture is subdivided in to three layers, which make up the basic services of a business application system: the presentation layer, the application layer and the database layer. Each of these layers performs certain functions and constitutes a part of the overall system landscape.


The presentation layer enables the user to interact with the relevant application. This interface is typically called the GUI(Graphical User Interface) and it is used to execute the application logic, utilizing the other layers in the combined infrastructure. Applications are executes in the application layer while the data to be processed is managed by the database layer.

Three Layer System

The distribution of system functions over several layers means that an SAP system is extremely scalable. The separation into layers means that the overall load can be distributed over several servers. The functions of a single layer can also be distributed over multiple servers. This is made possible by, among other things, the network communication of the participating servers.