Remote Printing (Access Methods S and U)

Use

Use remote printing if you are printing over a network; that is, when the host spool system (operating system spooler) and the spool work process of the SAP System are on different hosts.

The print architecture has characteristics typical of remote printing, explained below.

Prerequisites

Architecture Prerequisites

● The system prints remotely if the host spool system (operating system spooler) and the spool server of the SAP System (application server with a spool work process) are on different hosts.

● There must be a network to transfer the data to the print server.

For performance reasons, we recommend that you use remote printing (production and mass printing) only for LAN connections.

● Fixed IP addresses are required (unlike frontend printing).

● It is irrelevant whether the printer is connected locally or remotely to the application server.

● Remote printing requires reliable communication partners so that timeouts do not occur.

SAP System Prerequisites

To be able to address an output device from the SAP System in which you are working, you must define the output device in this SAP System. You do this using a device definition.

When you are configuring the output device in a device definition, you specify how the printer is connected to the SAP System using the access method. The access method specifies, for example, whether you are using local or remote printing. The access method is identified by a letter and informs the system which architecture is in use and which operating system you are using. In this way, the system knows the way in which data is to be transferred.

The system uses the following access methods for remote printing, depending on the operating system that you are using:

- Access Method U: UNIX systems; Microsoft Windows system (using a TCP/IP Print Server and SAPSprint)

- Access Method S: Microsoft Windows systems (using SAPSprint)

The figure below illustrates how the print architecture must look for remote printing:

Activities

With remote printing, the SAP spool work process sends the formatted data stream to the output device over a network connection.

The options for the data transfer to the output device are listed below:

● Transfer to a network printer

Network printers simulate their own host spool system. They can be directly connected to the network with a network card and receive SAP output data.

Consider the storage capacity of the network printer and the size of the print requests.

Access method U

● Transfer using a UNIX destination host

The host spool system is on a host that uses UNIX as its operating system. The data is forwarded to the Line Printer Daemon (lpd).

Access method U

● Transfer using a Microsoft Windows PC as the destination host

The host spool system is on a host that uses Microsoft Windows as its operating system. Depending on the access method, you can use SAPSprint from SAP or, for Microsoft Windows XP, the TCP/IP Print Server of Microsoft Windows XP. SAPSprint and TCP/IP Print Server accept the data stream and forward it to the host spool system.

Access Methods:

- S(proprietary SAP protocol) for use with SAPSprint.

- U (UNIX Berkeley protocol) for use with the TCP/IP Print Server of Microsoft Windows XP and with SAPSprint.

While data is simply forwarded with the access method U, the access method S has the following attributes:

○ Encrypted transfer, for example for HR data

○ Compressed transfer.