Many a times there is a business requirement of linking documents, entering notes, sending notes, or linking an internet address to various SAP objects.
These external attachments can be reference documents, pictures, Email attachments, designs, diagrams, or related spreadsheets.
To meet this requirement SAP has provided a tool bar called âGeneric Object services toolbarâ or âGOS toolbarâ.
The Generic Object Services (GOS) offer functions that are available in various SAP applications. These functions always refer to the application object in use, for example, adding an attachment to the application object, showing linked objects to this one, or starting a workflow from this object. These services can be included in all applications using Business Objects.
DMS-DIR is a term used to describe the document Master Record.
The DIR stores both the actual document and contains all the Meta data about the document.
Document management system or DMS as it is known is used for storing and processing documents and documents like objects such as CAD drawings, Materials, pictures etc.
With the help of Document Management System, the users will be able to view the documents with ease within their SAP systems.
DMS projects can be complex, since DMS is a whole module.
What is KPro?
As a document infrastructure, KPro rarely appears on the SAP system interface, apart from a small number of key administration and Customizing transactions.
DMS, CMS, IMS (Index management service) each part has special tasks and its own view onto documents.
The Document Management Service (DMS) is the KPro service that is the closest to the application level. The goal of the DMS is to provide an application programming interface (API) that allows the application to efficiently administrate documents without having to concern itself with the specific details of the physical repository.
The central task of the DMS is to process documents and document-like objects based on application-specific content models. Only the DMS can modify document administration data and save this data in a storage medium, such as the SAP database.
The Content Management Service (CMS) layer handles the technical details of the repository and administration function. These details include creating document versions, document retrieval, and administrating the server containing the repositories.
(Image Source: SAP)
DMS Content Model
The DMS content model is a 3-levels content model:
- Components administrate content
- Physical documents administrate documents
- Logical documents administrate collections of documents
(Image Source: SAP)
CMS
Content Server Architecture
(Image Source: SAP)
Summary - Advantage of the SAP content server
SAP content server provides a flexible and scalable architecture. You can enhance the capacity and performance of the SAP content server even further by using several servers and by decoupling the database server from the HTTP server.
The database is much better suited than a file system to the administration of large amounts of data.
The Content Server and the Cache Server are server components that interact with the Knowledge Provider.
Knowledge Provider is a component of SAP Web Application Server and provides the general infrastructure for storing and administrating documents in the SAP content server.
SAP Content Server is integrated via the HTTP interface, the actual storage medium used is transparent to the SAP applications.
The Content Server and the Cache Server are server components that interact with the Knowledge Provider.
Do I need the content server? why?
SAP recommends using separate content server. If we do not use separate content server, we will have saved all documents in SAP Database. Documents generally consume lot of database space.
In the long run, it'll impact system performance.
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