SAP in a Oracle server

Question

Is it possible to apply and use a SAP as a layer on a Oracle Database. Should the DBA have the knowledge on SAP to perform this... ?

Answer 1

Aman.... wrote:
I believe SAP is an application which has to use either Oracle or some other database for sure.
About knowing SAP, I believe, its going to be a tough task because it is not a small application.
If one is a DBA, he may try to know about it but it would be a big learning curve. Yes, SAP is a VERY large/elaborate suite of software, using a 3-tier architecture that can be spread
across dozens of servers. It requires a back-end database (often Oracle) to store business data
and to store much of the software code itself. There is a significant learning curve.
SAP controls the majority of the Oracle setup/install/physical layout. (Non-OFA-file-placement)
As a DBA, don't expect to learn over 25% of the application layer. (just the basic architecture)
SAP app details take SAP-experts years to learn fully, with as much internal expertise as the
Oracle database itself. (if not more)
Aman.... wrote:
And to manage the database, I think SAP offers its own console. SAP software supplies two different interfaces into an Oracle database. (that I know of)
(1) BR-TOOLS: This is a text-based tool with many sub-menus, that will run on the DB server,
which provides a wrapper to perform several DBA operations. It allows adding files to tablespaces,
table-reorgs, index rebuilds, running analyze/stats on all tables, backup+restore of database,
and several other functions. BRTools is a collection of several executables. You don't HAVE to
use brtools for everything, but if you are not an experienced DBA, it will take care of many things
without needing to know the SQl to care for an Oracle database. If you DO know you SQL well,
then BRTools may take more time to find the right menu, than to do things yourself, or script them.
After learning the sub-tools, you can use command line args + scripts to call exactly what you need.
There is also a GUI layer to run with BRtools, but I haven't bothered to put that in place.
BRtools also includes BR-Backup/BR-Archive/BR-Restore. These are only good for FULL Oracle
backups and archlog backups. Docs say that they will user RMAN and do Incrementals, but
we tried to get this capability to work, and it's not ready for real production.
(2) SAP Transaction/T-Code DB02 (app screen) or "DBAcockpt"
Within the overall SAP application, there are many screens with specific "T-Code" names for
specific user roles. (ie:sales, manufacturing, shipping, payroll, etc) There are also some to support
maint + administration, including some for DBA status of Oracle. Some good screens to look for
in SAP are called DB02, DB03, DB12, DB24, DB50, SE16, SE11, DBACockpit. Most of these are
read-only, to show status, history, reports, config, schedules, parameters, alert.log, etc.
They won't perform the DBA work, but are a good place to find SAP perspective of the Oracle
behavior & status, instead of writing all of your monitoring SQL from scratch.
Aman.... wrote:
I am not sure but I have been told that there is a language called SAP Basis as well for the
administrative tasks related to SAP. NO... the term "Basis" is not a language, but refers to the SAP environment itself, and the config
install, upkeep, maint, architecture, layout of SAP. The main "language" used to code SAP
screens is called "ABAP" and is specific/proprietary to SAP... just like PL/SQL is specific to Oracle.
Almost all of the ABAP code is parsed+stored in the database, to support server-side processing
within SAP, and to define the screen behavior for SAP end users. ABAP is very detailed, and very few
DBAs ever need to know ABAP. There are also more recent portions of SAP that use Java coding
to define screens + behavior... but much like Oracle, this is more of a recent addition, rather than
the 'core' of the software architecture.
Extras: There is an SAP add-on called "CCMS" which performs monitoring and alerts from SAP serves.
CCMS can monitor certain parts of the Oracle database as well, such as Tablespace%free, or filesystems.
Also: SAP will generate an "EarlyWatch" report, which tells you performance+tuning problems to look for.
Note: I have been doing Oracle DBA work in SAP/Unix environment for years,
and still don't know 'everything' that a DBA may want about SAP...