ITS System Landscape 

SAP development usually takes place in a dedicated development system. This applies to new developments as well as changing the SAP standard applications. All objects that belong to an application are managed by the Transport Management System (TMS). Once development is complete, all changed or created objects are transported into a quality assurance system and on to the productive system.

The Internet Transaction Server (ITS) is completely integrated with the SAP Transport Management System. Web objects, such as HTML templates or graphics, are stored in the SAP System. They can be checked out to the local file system for development purposes. This is done with the SAP@Web Studio desktop application. All transports are made within the SAP System to prevent Web objects and business application from becoming inconsistent.

The Studio also gives you the option of copying a set of Web objects from the SAP database to the ITS and to the Web server on which you want to run the application. This is necessary because the Web server and the ITS read Web objects from the file system only.

As a general rule, every SAP System needs a separate ITS instance. For stability reasons, productive SAP systems and ITS instances should always be located on dedicated computers that have no other functions. The following figure shows a possible system landscape for the development of Web applications:

In this example, the system load of the development and test systems is low, so the Web servers and ITS instances are located completely on a single computer. The Windows NT 4.0 operating system must run on this computer. The entire ITS infrastructure consists of only three computers, two for the production system and one for development and test. For large scale tests, for example performance analysis, you may need additional resources.

In this setup the development and test ITS always have to have the same release, because when being installed on the same computer they share the same executable programs. This is not usually a severe problem, because of ITS backward compatibility, but you should keep this fact in mind when planning the setup.

On their desktop PCs, the developers use SAP@Web Studio for developing the Web objects and SAPgui for application development in the SAP System. SAP@Web Studio needs an RFC connection to the DEV SAP system. Development is done in ITS instance DEV. For this, all developer desktops need to use NetBIOS Network Shares to access files on the server.

All developed objects are transported to the quality assurance system QAL by the Transport Management System. After this, the Web objects can be copied to the server remotely by using network shares, or locally with the SAP@Web Studio.

You can install an additional ITS instance for the ITS administration interface on the development and test computer. This is not shown in the graphic.

The production ITS is a dual-host installation for security and load reasons. Transports into the SAP System and the AGate computer work in the same way as in the development system. The Web server, however, is usually located behind a firewall system and is not accessible from any other computers. You can copy Web objects to the production Web server in one of two ways, depending on your security policy:

Service files (see ITS Technology) contain ITS configuration information, such as the SAP System that the service must connect to. On the other hand, they are also Web objects and as such are subject to the Transport Management System. This means that the service file from the test system could be transported into the productive system which would then connect to the development system instead of the production system. To avoid these problems you may have to edit the files manually after a transport, or exclude them from transport altogether.