Planning the SAP Printing Architecture (SAP Library

Planning the SAP Printing Architecture

Identify critical printing requirements:

Determine which users in your SAP System have time-critical printing requirements, such as shipping departments

Identify users who regularly need to print long documents, such as long lists from ABAP reports (for cost center reports, for example).

Estimate the total volume of output requests your SAP System will generate.

Based on your printing requirements, identify the critical printers in your company.

Critical printers can be printers that are used for time-critical printing, for example. Evaluate whether your existing printers can meet your estimated printing requirements and/or plan the acquisition of new equipment.

Consider whether a faster line printer might be able to speed up printing of long lists yet provide the print quality you require. Think about whether a central printing shop might be more cost-effective than small line printers in each department.

Your hardware supplier, SAP consultant, and/or the SAP Competence Centers can help you select the printers that best meet your requirements.

Assign your printers to one of the following three groups:

Time-critical printers, such as those that print shipping labels.

High-volume printers that must print large documents, such as long lists.

Non-critical printers, those that do not have to meet any special printing requirements, such as small laser printers for light-duty printing in individual departments.

If you have defined three or more Spool servers in your SAP System, then assign each group of printers to one or more of your spool servers.

No spool server should serve more than one group of printers. Example: A spool server for printers in the time-critical group should serve only printers from this group.

You can assign a printer to a particular spool server in the Output device definition in the SAP spool system (Tools ® Administration ® Spool ® Spool administration).

Assign printer groups to spool servers according to these guidelines:

Time-critical printers should generally be set up for R/3 "local printing". That is, the printers should be defined in the SAP spool system with access method E (OMS printing), access method C (direct operating system call – Windows NT systems) or access method L (print locally using LP/LPR – Windows NT and UNIX systems).

This means that you should only print to time–critical printers from host systems (UNIX or Windows NT computers) that also have SAP spool servers.

Avoid connecting time–critical printers with the "remote printing" access methods. These are access methods U (Print on LPDHOST using Berkeley protocol) and S (Print on LPDHOST using R/3 protocol). These "remote printing" access methods are generally slower than R/3 "local" printing. The only exception to this guideline is when the host system meets the high reliability and high throughput requirements described in Implementing R/3 "Remote Printing". A UNIX workstation within a reliable LAN network generally meets these requirements. Printers accessed from this workstation would be defined with access method U in the SAP spool system.

Note: Problems with a printer defined with access method U or S tend to reduce performance for other printers serviced by the same spool server. Example: Assume a U or S printer cannot be accessed because its host system is not running or the network link to the host is down. When the spool server attempts to send an output request to the printer, it must wait for network time-outs to cancel the communication attempt before it can process other output requests.

With Release 4.0, you can reduce this problem by defining multiple spool work processes on your servers.

High–volume printers can use any of the R/3 access methods. A high-volume printer can be accessed by the designated SAP spool server "locally", "remotely", or as a PC printer.

High-volume printers should be serviced by their own spool server so that processing of long lists does not affect other output requests.

Non-critical printers can use any of the R/3 access methods. A non-critical printer can be accessed by the designated SAP spool server "locally", "remotely", or as a PC printer.

Non-critical printers should be serviced by their own spool server so that they do not affect and are not affected by other print requests. If non-critical and high-volume printers are serviced by the same spool server, then large output requests may cause delays in processing smaller requests for office users printing on non-critical printers.

Non-critical printers should never be serviced by a spool server that services time-critical printers. Non-critical output requests may block the processing of time-critical output requests. If a non-critical printer that uses access method U or S cannot be accessed, time-critical printing may be seriously delayed.

When you have completed your print configuration planning, you can set up the printers in your SAP spool system.

The following topics provide explanations and examples of each of the printer access methods the SAP spool system supports:

Implementing R/3 Local Printing

Implementing R/3 Remote Printing

Implementing R/3 "PC Printing"

For details about setting up printers, see:

Connecting Output Devices to a Windows System

Connecting UNIX Printers to the SAP System

AS/400 Printing: Installing a Printer on AS/400

Defining Devices for Frontend Printing

Managing Output Devices: General Functions

This graphic is explained in the accompanying text First Page of SAP Printing Guide