Identifying the Components of the Web Tier

The presentation layer is representing the web tier of the SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 2025 architecture. All incoming web requests sent (from BI Launch Pad or CMC, for instance) are handled and processed by this web layer.

Considerations:

• There are many web tier deployment options that requires advanced setup. But it is important to identify BI web tier deployment options for future considerations.
• When you use the BI Launch Pad or other client application, the Web Application Server passes your request to SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 2025.

This presentation layer (web) for SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 2025 is using a dedicated web server and a dedicated web application server. By default, they are both installed and running on the same host in SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 2025.

Web Server and Web Application Server:

The Web Tier architecture of SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 2025 is composed of two servers running within the web presentation layer:

1. Web Server: Web server which is managing static web content, including images, HTML, or multimedia. Its role is to listen and process all incoming web requests sent by browsers before sending them back a web page as a result.
   Note

   Typically, the Apache web server is installed as a default web server in SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 2025.
2. Web Application Server: Web application server which provides an environment for dynamic web content, managing Java servlets to process requests (communicating with the Central Management Server) and generates response.
   Note

   SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 2025 needs a Java Web application server to process the server-side scripts (manage dynami content). If you don’t have a Web application server, Tomcat 9.0 is installed as the default web application server in SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 2025.

For performance or security reasons, you can choose to split the web server and the web application of SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 2025 for deploying the static web content and the dynamic web content on different hosts (not on a single host). You can use the Wdeploy tool provided in SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 2025 for splitting web servers and web contents.

Definition:

• Customers can already have a web application server installed in their local area network. For instance, Tomcat installed on a dedicated machine that is separate from the Web server is known as a split deployment.
• Split deployments increase the performance of the web application server as it no longer needs to serve static content. Split deployments generally improve the overall web response for users by a factor of 25% or more.

• The following web application servers are supported on SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 2025 for a split deployment:
  • Tomcat 8.0 or 9.0
  • IBM WebSphere 8.5 or 9.0
  • Oracle WebLogic 12 or 14
  Note

  SAP Netweaver is now deprecated as a web application server in SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 2025.
• Follow the link for a complete list of supported web application servers in the SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 2025 Product Availability Matrix (PAM) (SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 2025 Product Availability Matrix (PAM))

WDeploy Tool:

• Java web applications can also be reconfigured or deployed after the initial installation by using the bundled WDeploy command-line tool, which allows you to deploy web applications to a web application server in two ways:

  • Standalone mode:

    All web application resources are deployed together on a web application server that serves both dynamic and static content.

  • Split mode:

    The application's dynamic and static resources are separated. Static content is deployed to a web server, and dynamic content is deployed to a web application server.

• The web server and the web application server can run on the same machine, or on separate machines across a network.

Static and dynamic web content are provided and installed as a standalone mode by default.

Considerations:

• Deploying web applications’ static and dynamic resources, which are bundled in the .war file on the web application server, is known as standalone mode.
• The WAR files refer to Web Application files. These files contain web application components and are used to deploy web applications on a Java-based application such as Tomcat.

The deployment is simpler, but performance suffers because every type of transaction, even those needing static content only, must pass through the web application server.

Static and dynamic web content can also be installed as a distributed mode on SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 2025.

Definition:

• In distributed deployments, web application dynamic resources are deployed on the web application server.
• Static resources are deployed on the web server.

Distributed scenario provides better performance because static and dynamic resources are processed on separate machines.