SAP has been providing downloads of their latest Netweaver platforms on their SDN website.  This is a great way to play around with their latest and greatest infrastructure software.  There is an active community in SDN with helpful instructions to guide you in your endeavour.

Note that there is no business logic included in these download packages.

Packages are available for both Windows and the various flavours of Linux.  Combinations of Java and ABAP servers (SAP call these personalities) are included in these packages.  In this blog, I detail my experiences in installing the ABAP only server on a Windows XP virtual machine.  The host computer is a Windows 7 laptop.

First, the downloads.  I downloaded the SAP NetWeaver 7.01 SR1 SP3 ABAP Trial Version from SDN.

For the virtual machine, I am using VMWare Player 3.01.  So, while the SAP packages are being downloaded, I prepared a VM with 40GB virtual drive.  I installed Windows XP and upgraded it to SP3, applying all the patches.  This process took me 3 hours.  I gave the VM 1.5G of RAM.

Now, with the VM ready with Windows XP SP3, I proceeded to install the SAP server software.  I appreciate this blog posting greatly, followed its steps closely and after 5 hours of harddisk whirring, the software is finally got installed.

Oh, this one stumped me for a while.  Use winrar to extract the downloaded files.  I had lots of problems with zip7, with messages like corrupt archives.  Just extract the part1.rar and it will also extract part2.rar.

While the installation is going on, it does not hurt to look at the documents contained in the install package.  Open up the \DOC\html\index.htm file found in the extract directory.

Now is time to install the rest of the tools.  Installation notes can be found in SAPNWABAP701SR1_TRIAL/DOC/html/gettingstarted.htm

The following tools will be installed :
1. SAPGui - this is what you use to access SAP;
2. Database Manager - a program to administer the SAPDB database;
3. SQL Studio - you can perform SQL queries here.

To start and stop SAP, use the SAP Management Console.  Select the SAP system, in our case it is NSP, and click start.

To login to SAP, start SAPGui, create a login connection and log in using one of the userids provided.

The installation comes with a 1-month license.  You can request and update the license with a new 3-month extension.  Instructions are in the Getting Started webpage in the Installation Documentation.

So, here we are.  SAP running in a Windows XP virtual machine.

I have yet to start exploring it.  Once I have done that, I will update on the memory requirements, as I think the 1.5GB of RAM may not be sufficient.

There seems to be a whole load of disk thrashing, given the limited resources given to the VM.  That's the topic of another post.