What is NetWeaver?

 NetWeaver is SAP's integrated technology platform and is not a product in itself.In fact, the new version of basis is called the Netweaver.

It is the underlying technology for all the products in the mySAP suite.

All the products in mySAP suite can run on a single instance of NetWeaver's, SAP Web Application Server ,also know as "SAP WEBAs."

Netweaver makes possible access to SAP data using simple HTTP protocol or even mobile. This eliminates the need for installing and more importantly training in SAP's client side software.

The core capabilities of SAP NetWeaver are the integration of people, information, and process

People integration

It simply means that it enables you to bring people together and help them work more efficiently.

Examples:-

• Portal: - provides industry leading portal technology that delivers unified, personalized, and role-based user access
• Collaboration: - Collaboration promotes cooperation in enterprises using virtual team rooms (Collaboration Rooms), real-time communication (chat and application sharing) and the use of third-party groupware and synchronous collaboration tools (for example, Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes, and WebEx)
• Multi-Channel Access :- With Multi-Channel Access, you can connect to enterprise systems through web-based, voice, mobile, messaging, or radio-frequency technology.

Information integration

 It means you can bring together information from a variety of locations and have it make sense in the context of what your folks do every day! Examples:-

• Business Intelligence:- It provides you with reliable tools for creating individual and interactive reports and applications.
• BI Content & BI Content Extensions :- Enables quicker implementation using pre-configured role and task-oriented information models in SAP Business Intelligence.
• Knowledge Management:- Allows common access to unstructured information and documents in a distributed storage landscape like Search,Classification,Subscription,Versioning,etc..
• Search and Classification (TREX) :- Provides SAP applications with numerous services for searching, classifying, and text-mining in large collections of documents (unstructured data) as well as for searching in and aggregating business objects (structured data).

Process integration

 It means coordinating the flow of work across departments, divisions, and between companies. Usage type process integration includes all functions previously covered by SAP NetWeaver Exchange Infrastructure that you use to realize cross-system business processes. This SAP NetWeaver usage type enables different versions of SAP and non-SAP systems from different vendors running on different platforms (for example, Java ABAP, and so on) to communicate with each other. SAP NetWeaver is based on an open architecture, primarily uses open standards (in particular those from the XML and Java environments), and provides services that are essential in a heterogeneous and complex system landscape. These include a runtime infrastructure for exchanging messages, configuration options for managing business processes and the flow of messages, as well as options for mapping messages before they reach the receiver.

Application Platform

SAP Web Application Server provides a complete development infrastructure on which you can develop, distribute, and execute platform-independent, robust, and scalable Web services and business applications. SAP Web Application Server supports ABAP, Java, and Web services.