Overview of the R/3 adapters

Both client and server functionality is supported within an R/3 adapter. An R/3 adapter contains the Remote Function Calls (RFCs) necessary to pass inbound and outbound data to and from SAP R/3. The adapter includes transparent integration of the RFCs so that it is not necessary to possess detailed knowledge about the RFCs. The adapters also manage transactional information such as message transaction IDs (TIDs) as needed. This feature ensures seamless integration with SAP R/3 and also provides a robust auditing mechanism.

When a map has an input card that defines an R/3 adapter as the source, the adapter's server function is invoked to perform the RFCs required to ensure successful collection of the input data from the SAP R/3 system. For example, an SAP R/3 system has data that has been defined as input for a specific map executing on a Command Server. The map contains an input card that has the R/3 adapter defined as the adapter source. The R/3 adapter (server) receives the necessary RFCs to retrieve the SAP R/3 data. The adapter then passes the data through memory buffers from SAP R/3 directly into the running map for transformation into the target format.

For an output card, after a IBM map transforms the source data, the client function of the R/3 adapter is invoked, which performs the RFCs required to ensure successful delivery of the inbound data to the target on an SAP R/3 system.

The R/3 adapters used to interface with the SAP R/3 application are:

• JALE (for Unicode and non-Unicode)
• JBAPI (for Unicode and non-Unicode)