SAP R/3 is the most successful product for enterprise resource planning (ERP). It is used by most Fortune 500 companies and comprises modules for human resource management, accounting, logistics, etc.

Like many other application systems, SAP R/3 is based on a commercial relational database system which is used to store all R/3 related data; e.g., a company’s sales information. When installing R/3, it is possible to choose among several commercial systems; e.g., Adabas D, IBM UDB, Informix Adaptive Server, Microsoft SQL Server, or Oracle 8. Obviously, very good performance is crucial for users of SAP R/3. In many companies, transactions of thousands of users must be processed concurrently by SAP R/3 and the underlying database system. In addition, the size of the database can become very large. Today, the largest SAP R/3 databases have about 1.5 terabytes; in a few years, these databases are likely to grow several times that size as a result of new R/3 releases and developments; e.g., component architecture or SAP’s business information warehouse.