WebSphere Message Brokers
File: sap_techov
Writer: Kate Hostler

Concept topic

This build: July 31, 2007 21:40:50

Technical overview of the adapter

WebSphere® Adapter for SAP Software provides multiple ways to interact with applications and data on SAP Web application servers. Outbound processing (from an application to the adapter to the SAP server) and inbound processing (from the SAP server to the adapter to an endpoint) are supported.

Overview of the outbound and inbound processing interfaces

You have multiple ways to connect to applications and data on the SAP server.

WebSphere Adapter for SAP Software provides three interfaces to the SAP server for outbound processing.
  • Through its BAPI interface, the adapter issues remote function calls (RFC) to RFC-enabled functions, such as a Business Application Programming Interface (BAPI) function. These function calls create, update, or retrieve data on an SAP server and return the results to the calling application. You can work with individual BAPIs, BAPI transactions (ordered sets of BAPIs), or BAPI result sets.
  • The Query interface for SAP Software retrieves data from specific SAP application tables. It can return the data or simply check for the existence of the data.
  • With the Application Link Enabling (ALE) interface, you exchange data using SAP Intermediate Data structures (IDocs). For outbound processing, you send an IDoc or a packet of IDocs to the SAP server. The ALE interface, which is particularly useful for batch processing of IDocs, provides asynchronous exchange. You can use the queued transactional (qRFC) interface to send the IDocs to a queue on the SAP server to ensure the order in which the IDocs are processed.
WebSphere Adapter for SAP Software provides two interfaces to the SAP server for inbound processing.
  • With the ALE inbound processing interface, the adapter listens for events and receives one or more IDocs from the SAP server. As with ALE outbound processing, ALE inbound processing provides asynchronous exchange. You can use the qRFC interface to receive the IDocs from a queue on the SAP server, which ensures the order in which the IDocs are received. The event processing is tracked in an event-recovery table.

You set up the adapter to perform outbound and inbound processing by using the Adapter Connection wizard to create a deployable module that includes the interface to the SAP application as well as business objects based on the functions or tables it discovers on the SAP server.

How the adapter interacts with the SAP server

The adapter uses the SAP Java™ Connector (SAP JCo) API to communicate with SAP applications, as shown in the following example of a BAPI outbound call. The client application sends a request to the adapter, which uses the SAP JCo API to translate the request into a BAPI function call. When the results are received, the adapter sends the response to the client.

The adapter can accept requests from the client in a variety of formats.

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This build: July 31, 2007 21:40:50

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