Portal Architecture: Overview 

The Portal Platform has an open architecture that enables the integration of SAP NetWeaver components such as Knowledge Management and Collaboration.

The portal environment is for both developing iViews for distribution to end users and the administration of iViews, including connectivity and communication processes with back-end systems.

Portal Platform includes objects that can be accessed using a number of protocols. Although some protocols request individual objects directly, portal resources and objects are referenced by instructions that are encapsulated in a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) as encoded strings to form the address of the object or resource.

As a part of SAP NetWeaver, the portal is responsible for all processes, including components that pass messages to other platforms, and interfaces such as Knowledge Management and Collaboration.

Required Supporting Software

The portal is deployed on SAP Web Application Server, with which the platform shares a relational database management system (RDBMS).

For the Portal Platform, the database system holds various data such as the properties of individual components for both the portal and the Knowledge Management platforms.

In addition, the platform requires a storage mechanism containing information about users. The mechanism that holds stored information for users must be accessible to the portal for purposes of authentication and authorization, allowing users to access various content and enabling single sign-on. Users are authenticated once, and their authorization in other applications, or to information, is resolved by the portal.

A proprietary certification mechanism is installed with the portal to provide an initial logon configuration.

A Java Development Kit (JDK) provides the Java runtime environment required by the Java software and components in the portal.