I'm finding limited docs on Web Dispatcher with regard to reverse proxy and load balancing. Are you aware of some recent presentations or docs in this area? The info on help.sap.com is not what I'm looking for.
SAP Help features scenarios, parameters and examples and on SCN you can find blogs and wiki articles for the configuration and on the forums you can find information about real life scenarios from customers, their problems and solutions.
What more do you need? Documentation on how the parametrization really works and how to fine tune it or how to configure it together with specific hardware / software?
I have read numerous postings saying the Web Dispatcher is not a full blown reverse proxy. Actually, an SAP employee and mentor even said it himself. It's more of a load balancer. I'm trying to understand the limitations of the reverse proxy in WD compared to other third party products like Apache.
This means, that not all traffic from the backend will pass through the Web Dispatcher.
Ex.: It may happen that the browser is requesting a resource, the Web Dispatcher passes the IP of the client to the backend and the backend will connect to the passed IP -> traffic passes only Web Dispatcher from client side but the response doesn't.
To compare the features and to get known to the limitations of Web Dispatcher, you should create a list with the functionalities you need and then map them against Apache, Web Dispatcher, others. Without this requirement list it will be hard to find out the limitations or possible combinations of i.e. Apache and Web Dispatcher.
Thanks Tobias. Are you aware of more info regarding the reverse proxy features/functionality in Web Dispatcher? I only find a few sentences in help.sap.com about it.
best thing is that you look at your scenarios and test the web dispatcher against each of it, like:
- SSL
- Portal only
- Web Dynpro ABAP / Java
- BSP
- Different backend systems like SRM, MDM
- Several backends with 1 Web Dispatcher
After getting a list of use cases that you can test quite easily (installation of Web Dispatcher is done fast and can be done on a local PC), you can contact SAP Support and ask them about the specific problems and questions you encountered. This way, you'll get the official answer, sometimes they will even inform you about "secret" parameters and options.
As of the reverse proxy functionality: there are several version of Web Dispatcher available that differ from the functionality offered. The latest version - 7.2 - is the one that offers the most, i.e. allows you to create rewrite rules like Apache.
SAP Note 908097 - SAP Web Dispatcher: Released releases and applying patches
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