Enterprise Services Architecture by SAP AG changed forever how their software products were to be fashioned going forward. During this transition period, SAP R/3 morphed into R/3 Enterprise and finally ERP Central Component. Why? Strictly a client/server-based product, SAP's venerable R/3 offering was never intended or designed to support Web Services or a service-oriented architecture. Thus, in a nutshell, ECC represents the natural evolution of R/3 toward an architecture based on Web Services.
Beyond architecture, R/3 and ECC differ in other fundamental ways. Many of the differences reflect SAP AG's willingness to listen and learn from their customers. Changes to the technology stack, how it is installed, and perhaps most importantly how it is maintained account for most of the core differences between the two products; these and other differences are covered in the following sections.
Technology Platform Differences
The fact that ECC sits upon SAP's newest WebAS platform represents perhaps the most obvious technology difference between it, R/3, and R/3 Enterprise. Interestingly, R/3 Enterprise also sits atop a version of WebAS, albeit older (6.20). The differences between the two products are summed up in how these WebAS platforms differ. WebAS offered mature XML and HTTP support in version 6.10, but did not introduce support for Web Services and J2EE until 6.20. With SOA in its infancy, and only the initial framework for ESA being put together in Walldorf at the time, SAP AG needed an update to its R/3 solution, but at the same time wanted to hold a carrot out to customers to wait just a bit longer. With WebAS version 6.30, the Java stack and true Java development capabilities were introduced. Finally, with 6.40, both the ABAP and Java stacks were updated, and the entire platform was dubbed mature, ready to take on the world of Web Services, to enable Java development, and to host joint ABAP/Java deployments. Today, the entire NetWeaver '04 solution, including SAP ECC 5.0, is built on WebAS 6.40.
But what of plain old R/3? The vast majority of SAP R/3 customer installations today are getting up in age, to the tune of four to five years (ancient for an ERP solution). Although the tide is slowly turning, SAP R/3 versions like 4.6C, 4.6B, and even 4.5B greatly outnumber R/3 Enterprise and ECC deployments. These legacy installations (the term legacy is appropriate, I believe) sit not upon WebAS but rather SAP's original custom application server, coined SAP Basis or the Basis layer.
The Basis layer was SAP's extraordinarily successful attempt at hiding the complexities of multiple database and operating system platforms. And its three-tiered design solved problems of scalability and performance that other solutions in its day faced unsuccessfully. Basis was never intended to support the Web, though; indeed, the Internet itself represented the great unknown back when SAP Basis was introduced. To that end, when SAP finally first provided web support, it did so with a completely separate product, SAP Internet Transaction Server (ITS). And the SAP Basis platform merely served as the back-end to this decidedly front-end-focused solution geared toward enabling HTML-based web users with the opportunity to access SAP.
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