SAP Background Processing in SAP R/3

Programs can execute in the background of the SAP system while online operation is occurring. SAP's background processing system is easy to use and completely integrated within the system. Suppose a manager wants an accounting report ever Monday morning. Rather than having the manager execute this program online every Monday morning, it could be scheduled to run every Sunday night so that the report would already be printed for the manager when she arrived to work. This scheduling of a report program is accomplished with SAP' background processing system. 

The SAP R/3 Dispatcher and its Work Process constitute the R/3 Runtime System.

• From the perspective of the host operating system, the R/3 Runtime System appears as a collection of parallel processes.
• On each application server, these parallel processes include a dispatcher and work processes, the exact number of work processes is variable and depends on the specific configuration.
• There are five types of work processes:
  • Dialog work process for executing sequential steps in business transactions
  • Update work process updates the database. It has two types of components:
    • U1 components for executing time-critical database changes
    • U2 components for executing non-critical database changes
  • Enqueue work process for setting and releasing locks on SAP R/3 business objects
  • Spool work process for spool formatting
  • Background work process for executing background jobs
• In this chapter, we will examine background processing 
• Background processing enables you to plan the start of ABAP/4 programs. Then, at the given time, they are started by special work processes called a Background (Batch) work processes.
• Background processing runs are composed of jobs.  Each job consists of one or more steps (i.e., programs) that are processed one after another.
• In general, job processing is not triggered immediately; usually, a specific start time is defined when the job is planned.

Background processing enables you to plan the start of ABAP/4 programs. Then, at the given time, they are started by special work processes called a Background (Batch) work processes. Background processing runs are composed of jobs.  Each job consists of one or more steps (i.e., programs) that are processed one after another.In general, job processing is not triggered immediately. Usually, a specific start time is defined when the job is planned.
The three phases of background processing are:

• Job Scheduling
• Job Processing
• Job Overview

First, we are going to cover the Job Scheduling phase.
Next: Scheduling a Background Job