Application: Software package designed to perform specific tasks for users or other applications. Examples of applications include office applications, such as word processors, database management systems, Web Browsers, and enterprise application components such as the mySAP.com Workplace™, the SAP Business Information Warehouse (BW), R/3, etc.

Application Hosting: An arrangement where a service provider offers services for another company that may have been provided in-house. With the advent of the Web, application hosting has become an increasingly important service as it can be accessed much more easily. In contrast to application hosting, outsourcing also includes maintaining and operating customized solutions.

Bookmark: Saved link to a resource, typically a Web page, that allow you to quickly retrieve a particular resource in the future without the need to retype the URL. Many browsers allow you to manage and structure a collection of bookmarks according to individual preferences. A bookmark is also referred to as a favorite.

Browser: Application that provides a way to look at and interact with all the information on the Web. It uses the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) to request resources from Web servers throughout the Internet on behalf of the browser user. The browser then receives that resource - typically an HTML document - which is displayed by the browser. Popular browsers are the Netscape Navigator and the Internet Explorer.

Business Application Programming Interfaces (BAPIs): Stable and standardized method for accessing business functionality. Based on an object-oriented view on the business objects inside mySAP.com components, such as customers or sales orders, BAPIs are the methods used to create, access, and change these business objects and are an essential part of the Internet-Business Framework and the prerequisites for interoperability. Within mySAP.com, BAPIs are also made available over the Internet via XML and expanded to support collaborative e-commerce.

Business Intelligence: Usage of timely and accurate information to base decisions upon. Typically, includes a broad category of applications and technologies for gathering, storing, analyzing, and providing access to data. Activities include decision support, query and reporting, online analytical processing, statistical analysis, forecasting, and data mining. SAP provides a comprehensive business intelligence (SAPNet) solution.

Business scenario: End-to-end collaborative business processes that can also leverage the Internet and include the content and know-how necessary to execute the business scenario. With mySAP.com, SAP creates a comprehensive series of new, collaborative, Internet-enabled business scenarios and corresponding applications information, and services. The know-how, such as help and guidance for example, and the content, such as D&B information for example, required for the execution of the business scenarios is included.

Business-to-Business Procurement: E-commerce business process where employees are empowered to directly purchase goods and services from another company. SAP Business-to-Business Procurement (SAPNet) is an application provided by SAP that supports this business process. It empowers employees to directly buy goods and services from their desktop using a Web browser. The entire business process - from creation of a requisition where goods and services are typically selected from a catalog, to the payment of the invoice - is supported while seamless integration with the ERP system is ensured. Companies benefit from a tight control of the procurement process, a reduction in procurement overhead costs and better strategic purchasing as the purchasing department is freed from the manual, paper-based purchasing operations.

Business-to-Business Selling: E-commerce business process where companies can offer and sell other businesses goods and services. SAP Business-to-Business Selling is an application provided by SAP that supports this business process. SAP Business-to-Business Selling will be made available in 1999. Though SAP Business-to-Business Selling will collaborate with other procurement applications, seamless collaboration is guaranteed when complemented with SAP Business-to-Business Procurement (SAPNet).

Business-to-Consumer Selling: E-commerce business process where consumers can buy goods and services electronically over the Internet. Thousands of companies already sell products and services to consumers via the Internet. Customers increasingly use the Web to select business partners and buy goods and services, because they can benefit from 24x7 availability as well as price and feature transparency. Companies increasingly leverage the Internet as a sales channel to better serve their customers' needs.

Channel: In radio and television, a channel is a separate incoming signal or program source that a user can select. On the Web, a channel is a preselected Web site that can automatically push updated information for immediate display or viewing on request.

Collaboration: Interaction of two or more parties - people and companies - related to a common topic. This includes sharing information and doing business. Characteristic of collaboration, instead of integration and cooperation, is the loose coupling of the parties involved and the fast, flexible, ad hoc approach to successful interaction.

Community: Group of people or companies with a common interest that actively communicate and/or collaborate. Communities that leverage the Web as their infrastructure are also called virtual communities. Common interest is not limited to particular topics, although, until recently, mainly Internet and computer related topics dominated. Popular virtual communities include the Open Source community and the Internet community, which includes all people on the Internet. Some virtual communities use portals as an open place on the Web to communicate and collaborate. Also, all people and companies within the SAP ecosystem form a community - a business community. As components of mySAP.com, SAP will also provide applications, information and services to serve this community. SAP will also host a Marketplace™ for business communities on the Web to be reached under www.mysap.com.

Cooperation: Interaction of two or more parties along the supply chain for the purpose of doing business. Compared to collaboration, cooperation typically describes a strictly structured approach to interaction based on regulated standards, whereas integration describes a tighter connection often limited to within a single company.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM): Set of methodologies, software, and usually Internet capabilities that help an enterprise manage customer relationships in an organized way. It includes all business processes in sales, marketing, and service that touch the customer. For example, an enterprise might build a database about its customers that describes relationships in sufficient detail so that management, salespeople, people providing service, and even the customer can access information, match customer needs with product plans and offerings, remind customers of service requirements, know what other products a customer has purchased, and so on. In contrast to customer care, Customer Relationship Management tends to be used to deal more specifically with the integration of all business functions with each other. SAP also provides applications for Customer Relationship Management under the SAP CRM initiative.

E-commerce: Describes doing business - mainly buying and selling of goods and services - on the Web (also electronic commerce or EC). With its 24x7 availability, global reach, the ability to interact and provide information, the Web is rapidly becoming a multibillion-dollar source of revenue for the world's businesses. SAP is helping its customers to reap the benefits of e-commerce with its e-commerce solutions consisting of services and applications.

E-mail: Exchange of computer-stored messages by electronic communication. E-mail messages are typically transferred over the Internet. E-mail is the most popular Internet service and already reaches hundreds of millions of users. SAP also provides e-mail functionality in its applications.

Employee Self-Services (ESS): Empowers employees to actively participate in Human Resources (HR) business processes. It allows employees to view, create, and maintain data anytime, anywhere using an easy-to-use Web browser. Customers and employees benefit from up-to-date information while the HR department is freed from manual tasks and can concentrate on strategic tasks.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP): Industry term for the broad set of activities supported by enterprise applications that help companies to manage all business, including product planning, parts purchasing, maintaining inventories, as well as finance and Human Resources (HR) aspects. ERP systems are increasingly expanded to also cover supply chain management, customer relationship management, business intelligence and e-commerce.

Favorites: bookmarks

Graphical User Interface (GUI): Graphical rather than text-based user interface to an application on a computer. The term came into existence because the first interactive user interfaces to computers were not graphical; they were text-and-keyboard oriented and usually consisted of commands you had to remember and computer responses that were very brief. Elements of a GUI include windows, pull-down menus, pushbuttons, scroll bars, icons, wizards and more. SAP was among the first enterprise application providers to deliver a GUI for their users. With EnjoySAP SAP has once again redefined the state-of-the-art user experience and also delivers a new graphical user interface to its customers. Web browsers have now emerged as standard GUI throughout the Internet. As a key enabler for system mySAP.com, SAP will make all SAP business functionality available in a Web browser.

Homepage: First Web page a user sees in its Web browser when surfing the Web. Browsers allow users to select their homepage according to their individual needs. Typically, a homepage contains a collection of links to other resources and serves as a structured first entry point to the Web. Because the homepage is visible to users each time they start browsing the Web, many companies and communities battle for this popular bookmark with their portal. Companies typically preconfigure the homepage for all their employees to the entry point of their Intranet as SAP does with SAPNet. The term homepage also refers to the first Web page displayed when browsing a Web site. Typically, this is the Web page displayed when requesting with the URL only the domain of the Web site such as www.sap.com without additional substructures such as in www.sap.com/technology.

Hyperlink: Selectable connection from one word, picture, or information object that is typically embedded in a hypertext to other resources on the Web. The most common form of a hyperlink is an underlined word or highlighted picture that can be selected by the user - typically clicked with a mouse - resulting in the immediate request for another resource such as a another hypertext document, graphics or an application. All underlined words in this glossary are hyperlinks, for example.

Hypertext: Organization of information units into connected associations that a user can choose to make. An instance of such an association is called a hyperlink. Hypertext was the main concept that led to the creation and adoption of the Web.

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML): Document format that allows you to construct hypertexts. HTML is the language your browser understands. It became popular with the advent of the Web as it allowed users to easily refer to and thus find resources on the Internet. HTML is being continuously developed by the Internet community.

Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP): Simple protocol that allows you to request and receive resources, such as hypertext documents, over the Internet. The simple structure of HTTP and its free availability fostered its widespread adoption on the Internet.

Integration: Tight coupling. SAP has become famous for its vision and success in providing integrated business processes for companies of any size and direction. Recently, the boundaries between companies have been crossed and companies can now actively cooperate in order to optimize the business processes along the supply chain. With the advent of the Internet, with its ease of access to all people a more loosely coupled collaboration between business partners is sought. Still, integrated enterprise applications that support the inter-enterprise cooperation are the prerequisite for successful collaboration and satisfied customers.

Internet: Worldwide system of computer networks - a network of networks in which users of any computer can, provided they have permission, get information from any other computer. The original aim was to create a network that would allow users of a research computer at one university to be able to "talk to" research computers at other universities. A positive side effect was that, because messages could be routed or rerouted in more than one direction, the network could continue to function even if parts of it were destroyed in the event of a military attack or other disaster. Today, the Internet is a public, cooperative, and self-sustaining facility accessible to hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Physically, the Internet uses a portion of the total resources of the currently existing public telecommunications networks. Technically, what distinguishes the Internet is its use of a set of protocols called TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol). The most widely used part of the Internet is the Web.

Internet-Business Framework: Integrated, open, component-based product architecture that encompasses mySAP.com components and third-party products and technologies. The Internet-Business Framework provides SAP customers with greatly simplified systems upgrade and maintenance, increased interoperability between mySAP.com components, legacy systems, customer-specific and third-party solutions, and a more flexible platform enabling continuous change. The Internet-Business Framework is the Internet infrastructure delivering personal and collaborative solutions on demand.

Intranet: Network of networks contained within an enterprise. Typically, an intranet includes connections through one or more gateway computers to the Internet outside. The main purpose of an intranet is to share company information and computing resources among employees. An intranet can also be used to facilitate working in groups and for teleconferences. Typically, larger enterprises allow users within their intranet to access the public Internet through firewall servers, which have the ability to screen messages in both directions so that company security is maintained.

Killer application (killer app): Jargon in the computer industry for an application program that intentionally or unintentionally gets you to make the decision to buy the system the application runs on. A classic example of a killer app was Lotus 1-2-3, the first popular spreadsheet program, and a killer app that helped introduce the personal computer into the department level of large and small businesses. Similarly, R/2 and R/3 were killer apps establishing integrated standard software in enterprise - now it is on you to develop and deploy a series of killer apps for Internet-based collaboration.

Knowledge Management: Enterprises consciously and comprehensively gathers, organizes, shares, and analyze their knowledge with Knowledge Management tools to further its aims. Some aspects of knowledge management such as data mining and pushing information to users are relatively new. With its SAP Business Information Warehouse and SAP Knowledge Warehouse (former Info DB), SAP is delivering solutions for this increasingly important business process.

Logon: Procedure of obtaining access to the resources, such as applications and services provided by a computer. To authenticate users, typically a user identification (ID) and a password are required. In line with EnjoySAP SAP will ease the logon procedure and provide a Single Sign On for all mySAP.com components, that is, the users logs on once to gain access to all functionality for which he or she has authorization.

Marketplace™: In the mySAP.com context a place on the Web where communities can exchange goods and services electronically. Under the URL www.mysap.com SAP hosts such a Marketplace™.

mySAP.com: The new product from SAP to fully leverage the Internet. mySAP.com provides personal, collaborative solutions on demand. The goal is to enable business community collaboration to build better relationships with customers as people access information and processes when and where they need then. mySAP.com is not to be confused with the portal www.mysap.com, which hosts a Marketplace™ provided by SAPmarkets.

Open Source: The Open Source model describes a new way of developing software. Interested people build a virtual community and solve a common problem by developing working software. Contrary to the traditional approach of starting with a detailed specification, milestones, and information hiding, the Open Source model starts with a problem to solve, a typically very large community, and full, free access to the sources. An important rule of the Open Source model is that everybody has the right to change the sources as long as they make the changes available to the community. This sets the stage for a fruitful competition of ideas and solutions within the community and can lead to stable and reliable software. Successful development projects under the Open Source model include Linux - a free operating system also supported by SAP.

Outsourcing: An arrangement where a service provider offers services for another company that may have been provided in-house. In contrast to outsourcing, application hosting addresses outsourcing of pre-built solutions.

Personalization: Describes how software can be streamlined to the users individual needs. The term personalization has been popularized by personalization features provided by portals such as www.yahoo.com (WWW) and push channels such as www.pointcast.com, which allows users to tailor the application to their needs and interests. In particular, these personalization features have attracted many empowered users on the Web and now have become a de facto standard for high usability. With its EnjoySAP initiative, SAP has included leading personalization facilities to SAP solutions. With the mySAP.com Workplace™ SAP offers a role-based enterprise portal with state of the art personalization features.

           Portal: Relatively new term for a Web site that serves as entry point and location for structured search and content presentation. Historically, Web sites that provided a search engine targeted at the entire Web, added structures to ease the way users navigate through the Web. Over time, more and more features and services have been added to these Web sites such as free e-mail, personalization, and so on with the goal of keeping users on this Web site (which in turn helps selling advertising space). These sophisticated Web sites are now called portals. Popular examples of portals are www.lycos.com and www.yahoo.com. Nowadays, there are portals for all kinds of communities, and also Intranet portals such as SAPNet. With the mySAP.com Workplace™ SAP offers a role-based enterprise portal that goes beyond classical internet portals.

Protocol: Standard to which each party must adhere in order to communicate. Typically, protocols refer to communication between computers. Common protocols are Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), which provide the technical basis of the Internet.

Push/pull: With a Web browser, users request a resource from a Web site, which then is delivered by a Web server. In other words, users pull a resource. Recently, push services have been added to the Web that actively push personalized resources to the users. For example, the ticker you see when entering SAPNet is an example of a very simple push service pushing share price information to your desktop. More sophisticated push services are available on the Web and are typically delivered via channels.

Role: In the context of mySAP.com, roles describe a set of activities (functionality, content, or services) people need to participate in business scenarios. Roles, such as employee or service representative are focused on each individual's tasks and responsibilities in the enterprise and answer the question: How do I complete the work for which I am responsible? People can act in different roles to complete their work. The Workplace™ provides a role-based view to all functionality, content, and services available that are required by the user to participate in business scenarios.

Search engine: Helps to find resources in Web sites. With the increasing number of resources available, these "yellow pages" of the Web provide guidance. Typically, search engines allow you to find any resource on the Web that contains a particular term (free text search). Due to the masses of information available and their frequent changes, the search engines for the Web can never be comprehensive or up-to-date, but merely strive to give a representative snapshot of the available information. The major search engines on the Web are: www.altavista.digital.com ; www.excite.com ; www.infoseek.com ; www.lycos.com ; www.webcrawler.com. Many Web sites provide search engines limited to that particular Web site. For example, SAP provides a search engine both for the intranet portal SAPNet as well as the external Internet Web site www.sap.com, which you can access by typing a word in a search field.

Security: The Internet is an open infrastructure where almost everybody has access to disseminated information. To enable secure business processes containing personal and confidential information, Internet security features have to be used. These include Secure Store & Forward (SSF), which encrypts and decrypts business documents, Secure Network Communication (SNC) enabling secure transmission over the public Internet, as well as authentication of users and non-repudiation of documents.

Server: Application that resides on a computer and provides services to other applications or users. SAP became famous by introducing the client/server computing concept to enterprise applications with SAP R/3.

Solution: A business solution consists of an application together with necessary services. SAP is a solution provider and not only an enterprise application provider. SAP will complement its e-commerce applications with necessary services to provide e-commerce solutions to its customers. This includes both our traditional services and new services provided by SAP and partners and accessible via the Marketplace™.

Standard: Set of common rules and behaviors that ease interaction. Standards are particularly important to ensure the seamless collaboration of business partners. Many standards are defined and deployed by regulatory instances. In the Internet age standards emerge much more quickly while a much wider range of companies and people are involved in the standardization. More and more "de facto" standards, that are widely adopted rules and behaviors, dominate the scene. Standards organizations for the Internet include IETF and W3C, for example who see their roles more as moderators of a fast developing standardization procedure than as regulatory decision makers. SAP is also part of many application related standardization organizations such as the OAG, OMG, WfMC, and so on.

Supply Chain Management (SCM): Describes the active management of the entire supply chain from supplier to customer. SAP supports its customers with solutions that integrate information and decisions from the entire supply chain into a seamless, automated, and optimized information infrastructure. It provides the framework for integrating strategic decision support, data warehousing, planning and simulation, forecasting and execution systems in a closed loop with core enterprise financial, logistics and human resource applications. SAP delivers within its Supply Chain Management initiative the applications SAP Advanced Planner and Optimizer and SAP Logistics Execution System.

Uniform Resource Locator (URL): Address of a resource on the Web - typically a hypertext but, in the future, also SAP business functionality. The URL includes a domain name identifying the Web site and a hierarchical description of the location of the resource on the Web server.

Web: World Wide Web

Web-based application hosting: Application Hosting over the Web. The prerequisite is that all necessary functionality can be accessed via the Internet using a Web browser. SAP will offer Web-based application hosting together with partners and has also created a dedicated company to deliver application hosting solutions.

WebFlow: A workflow leveraging the Web.

Web page: A hypertext page accessible via the Web.

Web server: A computer on the Internet that is hosting Web sites and handles requests by serving the required resource. A Web browser is typically used as the Web client that requests the resources.

Web site: Collection of resources that are linked together and that exist on the Web at a particular Web server. Exploiting a Web site usually begins with a home page, which then leads you to the other resources on the Web site, but also to resources on other Web sites. The URL of all resources of a Web Site starts with a unique Internet address.

Workflow: Flow of structured or ad-hoc tasks including the organizational role and people as well as business documents involved and along a business process. A computer-supported workflow allows you to model, execute and control workflows, typically with a graphical user interface. Workflow provides the flexibility needed in the Internet age and thus more and more companies increasingly use workflow capabilities. SAP has offered Web-enabled SAP Business Workflow (SAPNet) since R/3 Release 3.1. SAP Business Workflow is now extended to WebFlow

mySAP.com Workplace™: The enterprise portal delivered by SAP. With the mySAP.com Workplace™ (SAPNet) users just needs a Web browser on the desktop to provide a personalized, role-specific view on the entire business world. This business world includes all applications; information and services provided by a company over the intranet or other companies via the Internet that any user needs to get his job done. The mySAP.com Workplace™ is not limited to employees but includes roles for external users such as business partners, suppliers, and customers.

World Wide Web (WWW): The definition of the World Wide Web - popularly known as the Web - varies depending on whom you ask. It can be seen as the collection of resources that can be accessed via a Web browser with specific protocols over the Internet. The resources are hypertext and multimedia documents interconnected with hyperlinks.

World Wide Web Consortium (W3C): The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) describes itself as follows: "The World Wide Web Consortium exists to realize the full potential of the Web. The W3C is an industry consortium, which seeks to promote standards for the evolution of the Web and interoperability between WWW products by producing specifications and reference software. Although W3C is funded by industrial members, it is vendor-neutral, and its products are freely available to all. The Consortium is international; jointly hosted by the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science (WWW) in the United States and in Europe by INRIA (WWW) who provide both local support and performing core development. The W3C was initially established in collaboration with CERN, where the Web originated, and with support from DARPA and the European Commission."

eXtensible Markup Language (XML): Data format for structured document interchange on the Web. XML itself is not a markup language, such as HTML, but rather a meta language used to create other specialized languages. XML documents will be increasingly used to allow collaboration, that is exchange business documents over the Internet.