The goal of this tutorial is to present the distributed system architecture, the data model, the database programming language, the transaction and process model and the system evo- lution concepts of SAP R 3 from a computer science perspective and to relate them to estab- lished database and distributed system concepts. The presentation will help attendees under- stand how SAP R 3 relates to their own research and development work and will provide a well-structured foundation for a further study of SAP R 3's innovative system concepts. ...

SAP and R 3 use SERM Structured Entity Relationship Model for data modeling. SERM was invented by SAP but is closely related to the common entity relationship model.

At the second level, the design level , processes are modeled with work ows which are user-de ned EPCs. There is no notation to speci y functions at this level. The data model of the analysis level is mapped to relational tables and foreign keys at this level. A data dictionary and data dictionary tools help to maintain the association between SERM-entities and relationships and relational tables

SAP is currently developing top down" a so-called business framework based on the notion of business components. A business component exposes its functionality by means of business-objects with stable BAPIs to other business components and to third-party client applications.

Business objects will help to close the large semantic gap between the rather low-level ABAP 4 function modules that have evolved bottom up" over the past decades and a problem-oriented view on R 3 as a collection of logical components that have to be cus- tomized, deployed and integrated with non-SAP software components
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Source: www.sts.tu-harburg.de