The Microsoft BizTalk Adapter v2.0 for mySAP Business Suite i s a "no-code" connectivity solution that integrates SAP data seamlessly from SAP R/3 4.X and R/3 6.20 (Enterprise) systems with BizTalk Server. The adapter provides services to support the transport of IDocs, BAPIs, and RFCs (including customized IDocs) inbound and outbound between BizTalk Server and SAP.
The Adapter supports the following SAP schema types:
- Business API (BAPI)
- Intermediate Document (IDoc) versions 2.0 and 3.0
- Remote Function Call (RFC)
Multiple IDoc, BAPI, and RFC schemas can be selected for each adapter in stance. The Adapter provides the following functionality:
- Supports synchronous and asynchronous transactions
- Provides full transactional support for all IDoc, BAPI, and RFC schemas
- Converts SAP structures to XML Schema Definition language (XSD) format
Microsoft BizTalk Adapter for mySAP Business Suite includes:
- Design-time (using the standard functionality available in the BizTalk adapter framework)
- Schema generation wizard
- BizTalk Explorer configuration pages
- BizTalk Administrator configuration pages
- Run-time
- Transmitter -The transmitter sends IDocs, BAPIs, and RFCs to the appropriate SAP system via the .NET
- Connector. If the SAP system is not available, the transmission can be retried, or sent to a suspend queue,
- Depending on user configuration.
- Receiver -The receiver acts as a listener, waiting for IDocs, BABIs, and RFCs to be sent by SAP via the .NET
- Connector.
- More than one receiver can be configured, in order to receive data from multiple SAP systems, and to
- Provide load balancing.
- Exception handling -The adapter provides full transactional support between SAP and BizTalk Server. If
- There is a failure in receiving or sending, the transaction is rolled back.
Microsoft BizTalk adepter comes with two components, first is runtime module called BizTalk/SAP adepter, which is communicating with SAP. Another is design time component that integrates Visual Studio design time functionality to adepter.
This Wizard is use to connect to SAP through a port defined on machine, search lists of SAP functions (BAPIs and IDOCS), and select the function to call. The wizard generates schema (xsd) for messages you need to receive/ send from SAP. If the selected port is two way (Request/Response) then it generates two root schemas for the request and the response types.
BAPI/RFC Interface
The RFC Library offers an interface to a SAP System. The RFC Library is the most commonly used and installed component of existing SAP Software. This interface provides the opportunity to call any RFC function in a SAP System from an external application. Moreover, the RFC Library offers the possibility to write a RFC Server Program, which is accessible from any SAP System or external application. Most SAP Connectors use the RFC Library as communication platform to SAP Systems. SAP provides the RFC API in the form of C -routines, incorporated in the RFC Library. The RFC Library is available on all SAP Supported Platforms. The RFC Library is forward and backward compatible, i.e. an older release of the RFC Library can communicate with a SAP System at a higher version and vice versa.
IDoc Interface
IDoc, or Intermediate Document, is a standard SAP document format that allows to link different application systems via a message-based interface. The three main goals of IDocs are:
- Structuring the exchange of business documents so they are automatically processed.
- Reducing the structural complexity of different application systems to as simple a structure as possible.
- Extensive exception handling before posting data to the application.
- IDocs are defined and considered on two levels, the technical and the business level. The former allows them to support application-independent functions, e. g. routing and handling technical exceptions.
Referances:
- MSDN Library
- MS SAP Adepter Documentation
Very soon I will present the next part of the SAP Adepter Series.
