SAP Printing System

SAP provides its own spooling and printing system within the SAP applications to enable a uniform interface for all printing functions, independently of the system platforms supporting both printing devices and application services. This is one of the features of the traditional open client/server architecture of the SAP Basis system.

There is at least one running spool work process when a SAP application server is configured for a spool server. This does not mean that the application server is not running other types of SAP services. These servers can be small, dedicated workstations with a high speed network connection to the other servers, which are used for connecting and configuring the host printers used by the SAP system.




Printers or other output devices defined in SAP spool system have a primary spool server designated; that is a server with one or more spool work processes running on it. This server is in charge of processing spool requests for those printers and devices. If the primary spool server becomes unavailable, it is possible to specify an alternate spool server in order to process the spool request from those printers and devices.

The host spool system is the ultimate component in charge of sending the print job to the physical printer. This is basically how the printing system works in SAP WAS.

***A spool request is not necessarily meant just for printing. It can also be generated for other communication or archiving devices.