So, let's talk a bit more about what SAP is. I figured out it will be at disservice for you if you were to finish this course not knowing what SAP stands for, and how it came about. So, SAP really started in 1972, when it first started as core systems analysis and program development. Over the next four years, it was renamed to be systems applications products in data processing. Being a German company, it has a German name which I would not try to speak, because I would truly butcher this thing. I'm not a native speaker of the German language. Let's take a look at how this company came about. This company was started up by five software engineers who were working for IBM. At the time they were actually trying to build a system, an enterprise system for Xerox. Unfortunately, this project did not finish and it was halted. This five engineers went back home to Germany, they thought that what they were doing for Xerox was really really important, and they decide to start a company to continue making ERP systems. Their very first client in Germany was actually a chemical manufacturing plant, and the system that they're building it was a pretty simple one. All they were required to construct was to have a payroll module, and also in accounting module. The result of that, they were able to create the very first version of SAP, which is called SAP R/1 in 1972. What we see in this first version of SAP, really is a combined version in which the application and presentation layer is all in one single layer. As they move out in the next few years, they began to get more requests to make more programs more sophisticated ones, and particularly in 1979, they were asked to create an additional module that incorporates the manufacturing side of things. Knowing that manufacturing side of things requires a lot of recording of different parts, different units, they decided to incorporate a second layer, known as the database layer, to store every single entity separately from the SAP software itself. This is when the SAP R/2 version begin to come up, because there's two distinct layers in the program. One from the database layer, and second is the application and presentation layer. In the 90's, that's when the client server architecture becomes more and more popular. What the client server architecture does is that, they allow clients or the end users to access programs that are stored in large-scale computers, known as servers, through their own terminal. So, recognizing this movement, SAP when about to tweak and change their program, so that it effectively has three different layers. The database layer to store the different business objects in the program, the program itself sits on the application layer, and the same time they designed a graphical user interface, to form the presentation layer that the user sees. Alright. Moving on in the 2000's, that's when we see the service oriented architecture beginning to emerge. What this era had, was that the different modules were able to call the different functions of other modules using service oriented names. So again SAP, I'm seeing that this trend is catching up, they tweak and change their program to incorporate this service aspects of it. This is where in the 2000's we begin to see further developments of SAP. So, as of now 2018, we are using the SAP version known as SAP ERP 6.0. So, having known the history of SAP and why it came about, one quick question that I would like to point to you is that, have you ever wondered what R stands for in the early versions of this software? So, R actually stand for real time, simply because SAP was the first company, or the first program, that allow real time access of the data that is sitting directly in the disk of a computer. So, prior to that, most of the computers had their data stored in magnetic tapes, that has to be processed by a human person manually at the end of each day. So, as you can imagine, the steps of processing data was actually pretty cumbersome, and SAP prides itself as being the first software and program, that's able to seamlessly access data in real time. Hence, we have the R fixed to its program in the early phases of its versions. So, moving on, let's take a look at a typical implementation of the SAP environment. Because of the fact that SAP does not, as program, does not have to be sitting in the same place as where the user is located, we get to see instances like this. A user might be sitting on the West Coast of America, particularly in California in this case here, using the graphical user interface on his or her PC to access the SAP program, and database that's stored in a different location. In this case over here the server that hosts the SAP program and its database, is sitting in Wisconsin. So, as the user used the software on his or her side, none of this information or data is stored in the user's PC. All of this data and movements is actually stored on the server that's located in Wisconsin. One important thing to note is that, SAP and also many other major ERP systems, made it such a way that once the data is being saved on the server, it saved there for good.Alright? It makes it very hard for users to delete or to make changes on this saved records. So, a quick question to you.What's the reason for SAP, for making it such a way that it's hard to delete data that saved on its server, making it for these data points to be saved for good in this service? Alright. So, if you recall from our previous set of slides, we would see the definition of ERP systems as systems that allow business transactions to be tied to financial transactions. Because most of the activities that businesses do are linked to some financial outcomes, there has to be an audit trail of what users do on the systems. Alright. So, as you can imagine, if a user could easily make changes to the steps, all the activities that they've done on SAP, they could easily commit financial fraud. So, for that purpose, SAP wants to have every single user movement on the system to be tracked and traced, and hence why we need an audit trail in the system. Here's another view of the SAP system, and how a user would actually come about in accessing SAP and its data. So, as a user SAP makes it very convenient for the user to access the program in multiple ways. So, after installing the GUI, graphical user interface on the user's devices, and these devices could come in a form of laptops, desktop computers, tablets, or mobile phones, alright. So, having access to this GUI, the GUI program would then talk to the SAP program that is stored in the application server elsewhere in this wall. Then, after that, as the program runs, the program will be seeking data that is stored in the data servers sitting in a different place from the user. Alright. So, I would like to conclude our first session by showing you two screenshots of how SAP looks like. So, on the top left side of the screen, you see that this is a typical login screen for SAP. A user will key in his or her user ID, along with her password, and upon logging in he or she will get to see the first menu within SAP. So, each of these lies in SAP's menu, actually represents a business domain. Users could drew into drawing in down into each of this domain, to review photos sub-features of SAP software. So, with that I'll end our first session, I look forward to seeing you in our second session
