What's the "web server" in WAS... ?

[Former Member]

A non-SAP colleague of mine bugs me with questions like "what is the web server-part of WAS? It's Apache, right?"

Me being relatively ignorant about these specific down-to-earth technical sides to the WAS, means I have to ask: What IS the "web server" part of WAS...? Is it a brand new built-from-scratch web server, or did SAP bundle a 3rd-party product like Apache into the "basis" system?

Trond

[Jeff-Gebo · Accepted solution]

Hi Trond,

good question. The SAP Application Server evolved into the SAP Web Application Server back in 2000 with the addition of the Internet Communication Manager (ICM). The ICM support the HTTP protocol (a web sever) and was written complete by SAP. SAP then introduced the SAP J2EE Engine, this to contains support for HTTP.

In a full blown Web AS (ABAP + J2EE), requests are sent to the ICM and then passed to either the ABAP stack (BSP apps) or the passed to the J2EE HTTP port if the request is for a J2EE web app.

So in short, SAP wrote their own Web Server...thus you don't need to purchase 3rd part web servers.

Hope this helps!

Cheers,

Jeff