System Landscape 
Purpose
The portal system landscape is a collection of systems. A system is a portal object comprised of a set of properties that represent an external, or back-end, application. Systems enable a connection to these applications and the retrieval of data from their information stores.
Integration
· During portal installation, a Portal Archive (PAR) file containing a portalapp.xml is uploaded and stored in the Portal Content Directory (PCD).
The portalapp.xml is a profile of an external application, providing all the necessary connectivity information to the application. The file can hold the definitions of numerous systems.
You can create a new system directly from the PAR file or from an existing system template. It is also possible to generate a system template based on the PAR file and then use that to create systems.
· Some external applications to which you want to connect must have in the portal system a representative connector, the middleware through which the portal content accesses the application.
The portal provides an SAP connector for accessing SAPsystems, and a Database (JDBC) connector for accessing generic databases. These two connectors are automatically installed to the Web application server during portal installation. For more information, see SAP Service Marketplace on service.sap.com/instguides ® SAP NetWeaver ® Release 04 ® Installation.
· It is possible to see the system landscape of any portal in the System Landscape Overview iView.
See Also: