The Internet Communication Manager (ICM) decides whether to forward an incoming request to the ABAP stack or the Java stack. All services contained in the enterprise services packages are implemented in ABAP, which is why a request for the execution of such an enterprise service is forwarded to the ABAP stack

The Internet Communication Framework (ICF) receives all HTTP requests which are sent to the ABAP stack and forwards the request to the appropriate application. SOAP requests for the execution of Web services are forwarded to the Web Service Enabling Layer.

The decisions made in both steps are based on the URL which is in the request. Each receiver is registered for a specific URL, or for a part of a URL, to specify the type of requests that it can accept.

To determine whether the ABAP stack or the Java stack is addressed, the Internet Communication Manager analyzes the first part of the URL, which identifies the virtual host, for example  https://www.myCompany.com:1234/WebServices/myService . The Internet Communication Framework analyzes the rest of the URL, for example  https://www.myCompany.com:1234/WebServices/myService , to determine the application that is to receive the request.

The HTTP Communication Layer does not modify the HTTP messages it forwards.