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Today, the editor will share with you the relevant knowledge of what the concept of SAP interface technology is. The content is detailed and the logic is clear. I believe most people still know too much about this knowledge, so share this article for your reference. I hope you can get something after reading this article. Let's take a look at it.

SAP interface

As one of the most leading application systems in the ERP market, SAP SAP 3 has also been ahead of other ERP vendors in providing ERP API and interface tools. ALE/IDocs is the interface mechanism provided by SAP for the version of SAP Rhamp3R4.6C, which is the most widely used at present. In versions after R4.0, technologically advanced BAPI has been added. As one of a series of introductions, this article introduces ALE/IDocs, BAPI and other available integration methods.

1. What is ALE/IDocs?

ALE, the abbreviation of Application Link and Enabling, is the integration middleware designed by SAP for the relationship between SAP and SAP. IDocs is the abbreviation of mediation text (Intermediate DOCument), which is the data / message format dedicated to system integration provided by SAP. ALE has been a part of the whole application system of SAP since SAP 3.0. it provides a reliable and secure communication mechanism for distributed data exchange. ALE was originally designed as a message passing service (Messaging Service) between two SAP processes, which enables the effective exchange of enterprise data between the business processes of SAP and SAP, and provides system integration services between two independent SAP. However, with the development of applications, ALE/IDocs interface mechanism has become a standard way to integrate with other non-SAP systems.

2. The message sending and receiving process of ALE/IDocs

The design structure of ALE can be divided into three layers, namely, application layer, data / message distribution layer and communication layer. The communication layer is the basis of SAP integration mechanism, which uses remote function to call RFC (Remote Function Call) to call the functional module of SAP system.

The data / message allocation layer mainly provides three key services: the data receiver is determined according to the data allocation model. Filtering and transformation of messages. Compression of data / messages to improve delivery efficiency. The application layer interfaces directly with the SAP system to generate or receive message text IDocs with routing information from other systems, including the name of the message receiver, the type of message to be sent and the rules for processing the message. The mechanism of ALE replaces the batch data communication BDC (Batch Data Communication) provided by the original SAP. As the name implies, BDC provides simple data batch processing services between systems, but can not be used as a middleware technology. It does not provide error correction functions, system management and other security measures required for seamless integration between systems. Generally speaking, applying SAP's ALE mechanism to integrate SAP with SAP or non-SAP systems has the following benefits: ALE technology is not affected by SAP version upgrades, and it provides version backward compatibility. ALE is defined in the SAP application layer, which is relatively independent of the logic layer of SAP, and the whole ALE middleware is independent of the sending and receiving system. ALE message design logic ensures that messages are delivered "once and only once". ALE uses store-and-send technology to ensure that messages reach their destination even if the system fails or the receiver is not ready to receive. This ensures that the receiver will not receive a duplicate message. ALE also provides IDocs management capabilities. There are mainly text reduction, text version control and text data filtering. The three control mechanisms enable SAP developers to dynamically process IDocs text in operation according to their actual needs. ALE provides system management functions, allowing system operations such as startup / reset / recovery of the ALE system, and provides further management control for developers. IDoc can transmit data from almost any SAP application, and it is a "peripheral" definition format, which is not directly related to the definition of SAP application data. IDocs has been widely used in the early SAP-EDI data exchange, so its design is somewhat similar to the EDI standard, that is, the EDIFACT standard. IDocs is character-based and therefore readable. It has three record types, namely: control record-containing text information, such as IDoc type, sender / receiver information, and text identification. Data record-contains management and actual data parts. Status record-used to track the status of each point of text transmission, such as status code, system time, error identification, etc.

The following is an introduction to the actual message delivery of ALE/IDocs in the process of system integration.

Let's first look at the sending process.

A sending process consists of four steps: event triggering, text generation, data packaging and transmission by the transmission medium, as follows:

Application system events trigger the state changes of system objectives (Objects), user independent activities or other database-specific changes can start the trigger program of the data table, so as to initialize data transfer, such as data preparation.

Generate main IDoc text (Master) generates the main IDoc file in standard format, containing all transferable data (regardless of recipient)

Generate communication Idoc generates text from the main IDoc that is only relevant to a specific recipient, and the communication text is a subset of the main text (Subset)

Idoc sends a certain version of IDoc to the receiver by asynchronous communication.

Next, let's look at the reception process.

The receiving process begins when the SAP system receives the IDoc text from the outside. The advantage of the receiving process is that the receiver can be either a SAP system or a third-party system, which is also the basis for the effective integration of SAP and third parties. The receiving process consists of the following three steps:

Storage Idoc- stores the text in the database and verifies the syntax

Mail handlers read Idoc-- A specially designed IDoc processor reads IDoc and generates system messages required by SAP or other systems. Multiple programs can run at the same time.

Generate system text-the processor further generates system text for use by the system, and stores the result information in the status record of Idoc d.

3. Introduction to BAPI

BAPI, the abbreviation of Business Application Programming Interface, is the interface application interface based on enterprise goal (Business Object) technology provided by SAP for version 3.0 or above. SAP adopts Object-oriented technology above version 3.0, which logically defines all the functional objectives of the SAP RP3 system, and stores all the Objects and BAPIs in the enterprise target library BOR (Business Objects Repository). The target type (Object Type) of the SAP Rp3 enterprise goal is equivalent to the concept of Class in the target design language, and its definition structure consists of the following parts:

Basic data-common properties of all target classes, such as target identification and default method (Method).

Interface-method of the target (Method), event (Event), characteristic (Attributes).

Key (Key Fields)-for target retrieval in BOR

Method (Methods)-- perform various operations on the target as required.

Feature (Attibutes)-describes the target feature.

Event (Events)-triggered to change the target state.

4. Apply SAP-DCOM interface

SAP first provided SAP-DCOM interface in 1998 to meet the requirements of various desktop application development. Using the DCOM connection port, developers can access SAP data in the way of DCOM targets by using VB, Cellular clients. In Web applications, you can use VBScript and javascript to access pages in DHTML mode, and you can also use ASP to access data.

In addition, DCOM can also be used to indirectly access SAP's enterprise target library BOR. The BAPI mentioned above is dedicated to the SAP system and is not as extensive as DCOM in practical application. The DCOM port mainly consists of two technical modules, one is the management module, the other module generates the DCOM proxy component (Proxy Components) of SAP BO, and the generated DCOM component is stored in C++. The proxy component has the following properties:

Randall 3 customer system to be accessed by Client-

UserID-R/3 user

Password- user password

Language- system language

Destination- predefined target name

In addition, each component has the following methods:

PutSeesionInfo ()-sets the target parameters for a single call by the system

AdviceRfcGuiSink ()-for situations where SAPGUI or dubugging is needed.

CommitWork ()-used in situations where data is updated without implicit commit.

InitKeys ()-DCOM target key initialization

DimAs ()-returns the Microsoft ADO (Advanced Data Object) recordset (cursor control is supported).

Other methods that inherit from the Randall 3 BO definition.

Generally speaking, as a relatively flexible ERP system, SAP Rhamp3 can realize the data / process integration between SAP systems and between SAP and other systems by using the above integration technologies. Of course, the high degree of customization of an application system leads to the difficulty of system integration. With the increase of the function of the system, it is necessary to use a variety of integration technologies. For SAP RP3 users, the correct selection of appropriate integration technology is the key to successful system integration.

With BAPI, developers can access BOR in real time, so as to realize the effective integration of application systems (SAP-SAP) on the data / logic layer.

These are all the contents of the article "what is the concept of SAP interface technology?" Thank you for reading! I believe you will gain a lot after reading this article. The editor will update different knowledge for you every day. If you want to learn more knowledge, please pay attention to the industry information channel.

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