Look at SAP NetWeaver through component-oriented sort of mid set. In SAP NetWeaver you will find following integration components.
SAP Enterprise portal (SAP EP)
SAP Mobile Infrastructure (SAP MI)
SAP Business Intelligence (SAP BI)
SAP Master Data Management (SAP MDM)
SAP Exchange Infrastructure (SAP XI / SAP PI)
SAP Web Application Server (SAP WAS or SAP Web AS)
Development and Management Tools are
SAP NetWeaver Developer Studio
SAP Visual Composer
SAP Composite Application Framework
SAP Solution Manager
SAP Enterprise Portal
Helps create software that brings together all the data and software tools that a person needs to do her job in one consistent user interface.
As one of the building blocks of SAP NetWeaver, SAP Enterprise Portal 6.0 on Web AS 6.40 provides key capabilities such as Portal Infrastructure, Knowledge Management and Collaboration, all based on open technology and standards, which make SAP NetWeaver a powerful integration and application platform. SAP EP Integration adds business value because it enables seamless deployment of BI
Applications.
Find more about portal on SDN
SAP Network Blogs - Portal Demystified - Part 1
SAP Network Blogs - Portal Demystified - Part 2
SAP Network Blogs - Portal Demystified - Part 3
SAP Network Blogs - Portal Demystified – Part 4 (Portal Selection Criteria)
SAP NetWeaver Portal eLearning Catalog
SAP Business Intelligence
SAP BI falls into a category of products called data warehouses. The basic functions of SAP BI are like most data warehouses. For example, imagine that a company has 20 different divisions, managed by five different CRM systems. All of the forecasting data might be consolidated in a data warehouse. This happens first through a process known as extraction, transformation, and loading, in which the information is basically copied into the data warehouse and put in a normalized form. (A normalized form involves pouring all the records from all the different CRM systems into one standard format.) The data is then rolled up into summary information, and precalculated structures called InfoCubes are created that allow complex questions to be answered rapidly.
SAP Master Data Management
SAP Master Data Management (SAP MDM) is a system for harmonizing information that is distributed across a wide variety of applications. In a way, it is a toolkit for building real-time, read/write data warehouses for what SAP calls master data. Master data is data that is not connected to any one particular transaction, such as customer information, product descriptions, and charts of accounts.
SAP Web Application Server
SAP Web AS is the foundation on which SAP NetWeaver is built. It’s like the engine behind the scenes of SAP NetWeaver that drives all of SAP’s applications and tools. The mySAP Business Suite solutions are written in ABAP and run on top of SAP Web AS. SAP EP is Java code that runs on top of SAP Web AS. SAP Web AS is as essential to the well being of SAP NetWeaver as coffee is to jump-starting corporate America every day.
SAP Web AS is as tightly connected to the SAP NetWeaver development environment as the IRS is to your income. That’s because it is such a core part of building applications and tools. It’s also the way that customers create custom code for their own applications.
It can be tricky to understand SAP Web AS because many of the development components operate at both development time and runtime. Keeping the distinction in mind between the development time and runtime capabilities of SAP Web AS can help.
At development time, all of the work to create applications is done through SAP NetWeaver Developer Studio. The code is then executed at runtime on SAP Web AS.
The following are important points to understand about SAP Web AS and its capabilities:
SAP Web AS supports two languages at the same time. Kind of like a UN translator, SAP Web AS supports Java code that meets the J2EE 1.3 specification and ABAP code, which is SAP’s language for business applications.
SAP Web AS is a fully developed application server, comparable to IBM’s WebSphere or BEA’s WebLogic. SAP Web AS has capabilities for load balancing, communicating with the Internet, connecting with databases, building Web pages, and creating Web services.
SAP Web AS supports the SAP Web Dynpro environment for creating user interfaces through modeling and code generation.
Thanks to the sap netweaver for dummies
Notes:
(1) From SAP NetWeaver 7.0 on, the term SAP BW is obsolete, and instead it is referred simply as "SAP NetWeaver BI" - i.e. "SAP NetWeaver 7.0 BI".
(2) SAP Enterprise Resource Planning (SAP ERP, traditionally known as SAP R/3).
