SLD stores information about all installable and installed components of a system landscape. SLD is based on the Common Information Model (CIM) standard. This standard is a general, extensible schema for describing the elements in a system landscape. SAP has enhanced the CIM standard with classes for SAP-specific content.

SAP provides both a Web-based user interface (UI) for interactive access and client APIs for programmatic access in ABAP and Java.

SLD provides information about installable SAP software, dependencies and recommended scenarios and regularly publishes updates on SAP Service Marketplace. You can browse this information in the software catalog views. You can also manually add information about third-party components to the SLD.

SAP software components that are installed on technical systems are registered automatically and on a regular basis in the SLD. Thus the SLD always contains up-to-date information about the installed system landscape. You can view this information in the technical systems views, and can aggregate and group it in the landscapes views.

In addition, you can use the SLD to reserve component names in the SAP NetWeaver Developer Infrastructure (NWDI). It contains the master list of all reserved names used in development, such as development component names, Java package names, and database object names.

SAP NetWeaver Process Integration (PI) uses the SLD to store information about business systems, which are logically connected to technical systems.