Need clarification for these names, R/3, WAS, NetWeaver

[Former Member]

Hi All

I posted the question on WAS preview installation, then I realized I should have put it here. Here is the link to that post:

Thanks again for any input

Xueqing

Added the link to the first post

Message was edited by: xueqing Han

[former_member181887 · Accepted solution]

Hi Xueqing,

First of all, sorry for any confusion that we have caused you. I hope I can give you an answer that will clear up the confusion. Sorry, but it is a long explanation of the development of two application solution but history tends to be very long winded!

It is <b>not</b> true SAP R/3 Enterprise equals SAP Web AS, and I'll hopefully explain why:

In the beginning (at least in the client server world) SAP only ship SAP R/3. The technology layer under SAP R/3 was called SAP Basis. There was only SAP Basis under SAP R/3.

SAP then started to deliver other software solutions that were not included in or built on the SAP R/3 software. These included SAP Business Information Warehouse, SAP APO, SAP SEM, SAP CRM, and the list goes on.

These solutions needed to run on technology layer (like SAP R/3 did). SAP Basis was the obvious choice for this because of the common technology layer providing DB/OS abstraction and a coding environment.

<b>~2001:</b>

Later there came the need to have SAP Basis support the web and its web standards and other programming languages. This radically changed what SAP Basis was and we decided to rename the new technology layer to SAP Web Application Server (SAP Web AS). So the SAP Basis name was retired and SAP Basis 4.6D was the last release called SAP Basis.

The new release and the "technology change" means that all the applications mentioned above now ran on SAP Web AS. The first release of SAP Web AS was 6.10.

<b>~2002:</b>

SAP Web AS was first used in SAP R/3 Enterprise release .

The important fact is that SAP R/3 Enterprise runs on SAP Web AS. SAP R/3 Enterprise = SAP R/3 business applications + new business functions + SAP Web AS.

<b>~2003:</b>

I hope the above explanation is clear, because technology takes another major change. It was realized that SAP now had a collection of business solutions/applications (SAP R/3, mySAP CRM, mySAP SCM, etc) and a collection of technology solutions (SAP Web AS, SAP BW, SAP EP, etc). The technology requirements for the business solutions did not end at SAP Web AS, they needed portal, data warehouse, knowledge management capabilities, etc to develop business solutions on.

To address this SAP made the decision to combine all the technology solutions and tools into one single platform. This made complete sense for developers (SAP, Partners and customers). This single platform is called SAP NetWeaver. It includes all the old individual components of SAP Web AS, SAP BW, SAP KM, SAP EP, etc).

<b>~2004:</b>

I think you can guess what the next step is. Yes, the new release of SAP R/3. Since the release of SAP R/3 Enterprise and the release of SAP NetWeaver, SAP R/3's name changes. It is now called mySAP ERP as it includes a lot of applications that were previously sold separately (like SAP SEM, MSS, ESS, etc).

So now mySAP ERP runs on SAP NetWeaver (yes everything that was in SAP Basis and then in SAP Web AS is still there but SAP NetWeaver has so much more now).

Also with the release of SAP NetWeaver, SAP starts to stop using the old technology component names - you will not hear us talk about SAP Web AS, SAP BW, etc anymore, just SAP NetWeaver releases.

In addition all the other SAP business applications also run on SAP NetWeaver, so the latest version of mySAP CRM, mySAP SRM, and mySAP SCM all run on SAP NetWeaver.

So to simplify the explanation, it would be :

<b>Evolution of SAP R/3:</b>

SAP R/3 (up to release 4.6c) -> SAP R/3 Enterprise (releases 1.00 through 2.00 -> mySAP ERP (2004 onward)

<b>Evolution of Basis:</b>

SAP Basis (up to release 4.6d) -> SAP Web AS (up to release 6.40 which was included in SAP NetWeaver '04) -> SAP NetWeaver (2004 onward)

SAP NetWeaver and mySAP ERP have <u>their own release cycles</u>. mySAP ERP always has an underlying technology release that it is built on (this is a SAP NetWeaver release)

I hope this helps,

Mike.

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