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SAP Web Dispatcher & Reverse Proxy

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Hello,

We are currently using Novell's iChain product for our reverse proxy (RP) to our EP7 Portal which in turn is connected to BW, CRM, & R/3. Can SAP's Web Dispatcher (WD) perform the same RP functions as iChain in this type of scenario?

For example, we have one iChain server which performs RP functions for EP7 which is also connected to BW, CRM, & R/3. We like to replace our iChain product and have been looking at WD. But, it doesn't look like a single WD instance can act as a RP for more than one system at a time. In other words, I setup a test WD system and pointed it at our EP7 system. It works fine for anything coming from EP7. But, for any iviews that point to BW, CRM, or R/3, it doesn't work, which makes sense since there doesn't seem to be anywhere I can define those systems in the WD. But could WD do this and I'm just not reading the documentation correctly? (Yes, I have been all over help.sap.com in regards to WD)

I did find the following SAP note, 740234, that discusses this to an extent, but it is mostly about load balancing across disparate systems, not RP functionality across disparate systems. Thus, I'm not sure this applies. Assuming this note is correct from a RP viewpoint, can I just run multiple WDs all on the same standalone system? Also, if that is the case, how is it that when I call a BW iView from the Portal, it knows to go through the other WD setup on that system?

Bottom line is, does/will SAP's WD perform the same functions as iChain or should we be looking elsewhere?

Hope that all made sense!

Thanks,

Tom

Accepted Solutions (1)

Accepted Solutions (1)

Benny
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
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Hello Tom

The idea of WD is to dispatch a cluster of machines in the same system, not to dispatch systems in general.

However, I have a problem to understand how you handle your systems. iViews should always go through the portal and should definitely not redirect to any other systems. Your data stream should go through the portal, not around it.

There are more things then that irritate me, like how you handle user management in that case etc..

Regards,

Benny

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Hello Benny,

For the sake of simplicity, lets say I have a portal called 'ABC' and a BW system called 'XYZ'. So, to access the portal directly, without going through the iChain RP, I would enter http://abc.company.com/ but going through the RP, I would enter something like http://MyPortal.company.com/ and iChain knows it should direct the traffic to ABC.

In the portal, I have a XYZ defined in the System Landscape. Then in the portal, I create an iView that uses the BW system defined in the System Landscape.

Again, without going through the RP, if I click on the XYZ iView in the portal, it connects to XYZ to get whatever info it needs from XYZ and presents it back, through the portal. But, the URL behind that iView, goes to http://xyz.company.com. But, if I do all the same things, this time going through the RP, it understands that it needs to be the RP for both ABC and XYZ and acts accordingly.

Does that make more sense? Can WD also act in this fashion? As far as user management goes, that is done with LDAP.

Thanks,

Tom

Benny
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
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Tom,

what you want to do is not available today. There is something like that in the works, but not as an RP solution. The configuration of systems behind the portal will be more dynamic in future.

Alternative for now could be to have a second WD after the portal - which would shrink your abilities to handle BI pages, as they only would arrive as HTML content.

The functionality you want here is not available with WD.

Regards,

Benny

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Benny,

Thanks for the info, albeit dissappointing, I can now move on to finding a more suitable replacement for iChain. One question about your comment, "Alternative for now could be to have a second WD after the portal - which would shrink your abilities to handle BI pages, as they only would arrive as HTML content." I'm not sure I understand what you are saying here. The content already is HTML, so what BI abilities would be shrunk?

Thanks,

Tom

Benny
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
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Tom,

I'm not an expert on this but my assumption is that the iView and/ or portal does additional communication with the BI source system and therefore has additional functionality. If you are using nothing else but the plain HTML pump-through mechanism that is there any ways, then you're fine and can use that technique.

Regards,

Benny

Answers (1)

Answers (1)

Former Member
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Hi Tom,

Any break thorugh. I am also trying to achieve the same using WD?

I have exposed WD and published portal now I want to use same WD for BW and R3 also. Suppose If i change the ITS and BW was domains to same portal domain name where should I set this redirection in WD for portas as my BW,R3 and portal ports are always different.

Regards