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Identifying the Components of the Web Tier

Objective

After completing this lesson, you will be able to identify web tier deployment options

Web Tier Architecture

See the following scenario depicting how to modify the properties of the BI Launch Pad on the Web Application Server.

There are many web tier deployment options that requires advance setup and not covered in this course. 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 the BI platform.

The following Web Application Servers are supported:

Apache Tomcat 9
IBM WebSphere Liberty 21
Oracle WebLogic 14.1
SAP NetWeaver 7.5

For a complete list of supported application servers, see the Product Availability Matrix.

SBOP_BI_4.3 (sap.com)

Note

The BI platform needs a Java Web application server to process the server-side scripts. If you don’t have a Web application server, the installation program can install and configure an Apache Tomcat Web Application Server.

Web servers

You can use a dedicated Web server such as Apache to host static Web content, including images, HTML, or multimedia files.

Tomcat manages dynamic content. Tomcat on a dedicated machine that is separate from the Web server is know 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.

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 and Web application servers can run on the same machine, or on separate machines across a network.

WDeploy Deployment modes

Standalone Mode

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.

Distributed Mode

In distributed deployments, Web application dynamic resources are deployed on the Web application server, and their static resources are deployed on the Web server.

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

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