JSP development using SAP WEB AS

[Former Member]

Hello Friends,

I have few confisuions and would be great if some one help me in this regard,

Actually I listen the following presentation

https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/servlet/prt/portal/prtroot/com.sap.km.cm.docs/documents/a1-8-4/building your own custom applications with sap web as.abst

the guy showed the possibilites of development using WEB AS. On slide "Two Personalities in One Application Server" he showed a Arch-diagram of Web AS of combining J2EE and ABAP worlds. Things are clear to me till here!

But when he came to JSP/J2EE development using Web AS 6.20, he start talking about SAP JCo using JSP. !

The diagram which in shows in the slides, gives me the idea that, we can do the programming and use the SAP Backend system using JSP similar too that of BSP ( means without using RFC calls). but he start discusing the JCO using WEB AS. ?

I would like to know that, is there any possibility that we can do JSP programming using WEB AS in similar way as BSP like without using RFC ?

I think I am clear engough, !

Many thanks!

[former_member198228 · Accepted solution]

Hello Marek

You have to use SAP JCO only if you need to interact with an ABAP based system. If not you can use standard jsps calling java beans and jdbc. Hope that makes it clearer

Regards

Abdul

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Abdul,

>If not you can use standard jsps calling java beans and jdbc. Hope that makes it clearer

So you mean that using JSP, Java beans and JDBC, I can access the SAP system without using JCO ??

Pls let me know ?

Marek

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Marek,

please don't get confused with the term "SAP system". A SAP system can consist of a Web Application Server for ABAP (somehow comparable to SAP R/3 Basis in earlier versions) and/or a Web Application Server for Java (or J2EE, what you like most). If there are two servers, they are (and IMHO will always be) separated according to their runtime environment. JCO is the bridge between both runtimes (communicating using TCP/IP or shared memory). It's easier to understand if you imagine that the corresponding "other" system is remote. If you stay "inside the technology" (Java or ABAP) you don't need JCO (using JDBC allows you to access databases in the Java server, but (hopefully) not the database of the ABAP server and vice versa).

Hope that helps (finally )

Regards

Stefan

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Stefan,

Thanks for your reply, can you pls explain the following sentence more ?

>If you stay "inside the technology" (Java or ABAP) you don't need JCO

What does that mean to stay inside the technology ??

With Regards,

Marek,

PS: I have got the pictuer in my mind for all this stuff

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Marek,

you want a picture? <a href="http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw04/helpdata/en/e8/bda7c0cef411d6b2bd00508b5d5211/content.htm">Here we go.</a> If you take a look Figure 1 on the page, you see the "Java technology" on the left, the "ABAP technology" on the right side. If you use JDBC for example, you'll never leave the left container, if you access tables in ABAP, you'll never leave the right container.

Hope that helps.

Regards

Stefan

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Stefan,

Thanks for your reply and pic, I got the idea, what do u mean, I have seen more or less the same pic in the presentaion I have mentioned in my other post !

Well to be very honest I dont understand the reason of having J2EE engine in WEB AS then, if we still need to using RFC call using JCO to access the back-end system, I mean, JCO is avaiable ( JCO.jar) and one can do the programming without using web As, .............but ofcourse there would be some difference also of using JCO independently with web AS or with web AS, I am intreased to see that

Any comments pls

Marek

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Marek,

well, you don't <b>have to</b> use the WebAS, if you don't really need it (sorry, SAP). If you just wan't to have some nice JSPs with some ABAP backend access, it's sufficient to use a Tomcat with JCO for example.

If you are not really dependant on using JSPs (and Java), you could use BSPs (Business server pages) to build the web pages directly in/from the ABAP system.

We should look behind the scenes: What do you want to achieve with your current application scenario? What are your requirements according to future extendibility?

Hope that helps.

Regards

Stefan

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Stefan,

Thanks for your comments

I am trying to develop an application which will manage the SAP Business Partner. I have to develop the same application using both BSP and JSP and then compare them both on some factors such as performance, scalibility, reliablity, maintainablity and etc.

I have already develop the application using BSP and JSP(SAP JCO and Jboss) and now I need to compare them ( I am on my way to this ) but last week I came accross a presentation on SDN where they explain to construct the J2EE application using web as ( I was not thinking that inside the Web AS we still need RFC to access the back-end system ), so this is all

I was intrested to develop the application using web AS because I thought as I use RFC calls while access the back-end system when I deploy my application in JBOSS, in web AS, it might get a bit faster ( performance point of view, but now I know in Web AS we still need to use RFC )

With Regards,

Marek

Message was edited by: Marek Jöricke

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Marek,

the answers are really simple:

1. Performance:

BSP will be faster, since JCO will always be a bottleneck between the systems. There is also some overhead which results from tranporting the requests and responds via the current communication protocol (more on TCP/IP, less on shared memory).

To be fair somehow, you should implement and test the inverse scenario too (calling functions realized in Java from ABAP) and you should also assure, that the implementation logic is equivalent according to possible maximum performance on JSP <b>and</b> BSP.

I've done this test months ago (there was a customer requirement also) and the result was, that the really time consuming part was the transport of (possibly large amounts) of data between the systems (not really surprising though). BTW, ABAP isn't faster in accessing Java functions than Java in accessing ABAP functions.

2. The maintainability is upto now better on the ABAP side (just a matter of maturity of the system).

3. The reliability is also better upto now on the ABAP side. Why? Since the whole environment were build for mission critical tasks. Some ABAP concepts are currently "migrated" to the Java world (like the ABAP work processes, which are (roughly spoken) realized by JVM container isolation), but for now there's lack in these things.

So, the conclusion is also simple:

If there's not really a need to cross the system boundaries, you shouldn't do it.

And again, there's no way to access the ABAP system from Java and the Java system from ABAP without using JCO. Simply forget that.

Hope that helps.

Regards

Stefan

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

hey, thanks for your valuable comments !

can you guide me to some resource which provide the material about performance, raliability, maintaiablity etc of ABAP & BSP which support the comments u made, ( though I believe you ).

Are u working in germany somewhere ??

Do u also construct a similar application in both BSP and JSP to evaluate them ?? what kind of application and may I ask you how you evaluate them ??

With Regards,

Marek

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Marek,

> can you guide me to some resource which provide the

> material about performance, raliability,

> maintaiablity etc of ABAP & BSP which support the

> comments u made, ( though I believe you ).

first of all it's nice, that you believe me I don't know some official SAP material comparing the mentioned aspects, the statements are therefore based on own testing and experience.

>

> Are u working in germany somewhere ??

yes, at least most of the time

>

> Do u also construct a similar application in both BSP

> and JSP to evaluate them ?? what kind of application

> and may I ask you how you evaluate them ??

>

Not at the moment. As i already said, there was a customer requirement some months ago. The application scenario was different than your one. Since the comparison results shouldn't depend on existing implementation specific details, the test application was designed from scratch in Java and ABAP, mainly focussed on aspects of data transfer performance.

Anyway, i hope, your confusion is gone now. Good luck!

Regards

Stefan

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Stefan,

Thanks for your reply, and kind help.

Regards,

Marek