Nilkamal: - I hope that you people have enjoyed your lunch today. So, let us proceed now. But, please don’t fall asleep, because after having a heavy meal, everyone feels sleepy. Whenever you feel sleepy, just ask me questions, automatically, your sleep will go away. Or, if I find anyone sleeping, I will ask him or her, some questions regarding this topic. Anyway, before proceeding further, I want to know, if you people are having any doubts about what I have taught you so far?
Ravi: - Sir, is there any difference between BASIS consultants and ABAP consultants?
Nilkamal: - Well, both of them are Technical consultants only, but their roles are slightly different. A BASIS consultant will be in charge of Hardware engineering, Networking, DBA and System administrative roles, whereas a ABAP consultant will only do the programming with the ABAP language to customize a module or sub-modules as per client’s specifications. Ok, now let me tell you about the architecture of SAP. By the way, what do you understand by the term ‘Architecture’ in the IT world?
Chaitanya: - It is a backbone or the structure of any setup, through which the date transmission will take place.
Nilkamal: - Hmm, it is partially correct, but in this structure, it can follow a hierarchical model or it can have a parallel mode. It can work in unidirectional from one end to the other or it can be multi-directional, which is ‘to and fro’ movement of data. The SAP follows the R/3 architecture.
Sarita: - What is R/3, sir?
Nilkamal: - R/3 is the short form of Real Time 3 –Tier Architecture. SAP has 1st Tier, 2nd Tier and 3rd Tier. Here Tier means different levels. In the 1st Tier, there is a Database Server. In the 2nd Tier, there should be at least two Application Servers. One Application Server will be for ABAPers, and the other one for BASIS consultants. In the 3rd Tier, there are several Presentation Servers. The concept of SAP GUI comes in these Presentations Servers only.
Manoj: - What is GUI?
Dulal: - it is Graphical User Interface only.
Manoj: - So, sir, the functional consultants will be working with this presentation server only.
Nilkamal: - Yes, you are right.
Arindam: - Sir, as a functional consultant, can we edit any system setting?
Nilkamal: - No, you can’t. For that, you need to specify your requirements to the technical consultant. As a functional consultant, you just need to do the proper clicking, right data entries and then generate reports. Suppose, you need to change the limit of minimum balance of an account from 5000 to 2000 and an alert to be sent to the client, whenever the amount goes below the minimum balance. Only technical consultant can do that change by setting triggers. R/3 server is just a little part. The entire landscape of SAP is vast. Functional consultants can start working only after the Implementation Period is completed by the technical consultants.
Rinky: - What is this implementation period?
Nilkamal: - I know that it will be very difficult for you people to understand, as we are not dealing with SAND BOX (Licensed version of SAP), but only the Internet Demonstrative Education System (IDES), which is for students only. See, there is a development server, where the main configurations take place. Then, the request goes to the Testing Server, where full-fledged testing is done. After the completion of testing, the request goes to the Production Server, where the live data gets stored on a real-time basis in the R/3 server. Remember, that no editing can be done here. These live data can be used to generate reports only, but not for analysis. To do the analysis or preparing analytic reports, the data is send to ETL Server, and from there begins another module of SAP, known as SAP BI. BI stands for Business Intelligence. ETL means Extraction, loading and transformation of data. ETL servers work on the mechanism of Data Warehousing, e.g. COGNOS & INFORMATICA software. Let us keep our demo session till here.
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