SAP® ERP

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SAP® ERP extends your SAP business processes and integrates non-SAP products by using open and nonproprietary technology. SAP® ERP allows for bidirectional, real-time communication to and from the SAP system. SAP® ERP is based on the on-premises webMethods Adapter for SAP (WmSAP).

SAP® ERP increases customer loyalty and efficiency across the supply chain by tightly integrating your business infrastructure with any partner. Following are the typical deployment scenarios for SAP® ERP.

  • Real-time integration between supplier inventories and your SAP system.
  • Real-time integration between product, price, and availability information from any number of suppliers and your purchasing application.
  • Real-time integration between fulfilment and order tracking applications and your shippers’ internal systems.
Note: SAP® ERP connector access is restricted and is not publicly available. For more information, contact IBM® support.

Key features

The purpose of the section is to clarify the use of SAP® ERP with the restricted access (RA) version. Read through the differences between WmSAP and SAP® ERP, and analyze whether the migration of existing WmSAP applications to SAP® ERP is affected.

  • Synchronous and asynchronous communication with SAP systems through RFC, tRFC, qRFC, and bgRFC
    • SAP® ERP runs the Application Link Enabling (ALE) services inside the SAP system asynchronously, which integrates the business processes. SAP® ERP also runs SAP remote function calls.
    • Asynchronous processing transparently uses the Application Link Enabling (ALE) services inside the SAP system for the client to integrate the business processes.
    • Run the SAP Remote Function Calls (RFCs) from SAP® ERP. You can access all SAP functionality that is available through RFC from SAP® ERP. External applications do not need to understand the SAP data types, ABAP structures, or the RFC protocol to communicate with an SAP system.
  • Bidirectional and multithreaded communication to and from SAP systems
    • Call and start services from the SAP systems. It allows the SAP users to access information that is available through SAP® ERP. SAP® ERP enables integration between trading partners, therefore, by extending the reach of your SAP infrastructure to customers, partners, and suppliers.
  • Higher-level services to process SAP IDocs and BAPIs
    • Send IDocs to the SAP® ERP. You can send intermediate documents to SAP® ERP for further synchronous processing or let them be published to subscribers asynchronously.
    • Use the SAP’s implementation-independent Business Application Programming Interface (BAPI) methods as described in the Business Object Repository (BOR). BAPIs are stable, precisely defined, and well-documented interfaces to SAP solutions, providing standardized access to SAP solutions on a semantic level. You can quickly and easily create XML-based services that run a BAPI. Applications within your organization can then start the services to run a BAPI on the SAP system. Similarly, your Business Partners can make requests over the Internet to start a service that runs a BAPI. The BAPI-interfaces provide unified access to the application-level functionality, independent of the type of call; both synchronous and asynchronous processing can be triggered by using these interfaces.
    • Route SAP business documents based on the criteria you specify. SAP® ERP provides rich routing capabilities for BAPIs, RFCs, and IDocs. Different transport types are available out-of-the-box. These include routing of a business document to another SAP system or to a remote URL in an XML format.
  • Load balancing of incoming SAP documents.
  • XML and Internet enabling of existing SAP releases.
  • Supports BizTalk XML envelopes for BAPI and RFC calls.
  • Supports unified error handling of BAPIs and RFCs on the XML level.

Pre-requisites

  • Install SAProuter tunnel software to connect from SAP® ERP to your SAP systems (located either on-premises or in a private cloud). An existing SAProuter installation in your environment can also be used for the connectivity to SAP® ERP in webMethods Integration.

    SAProuter can be downloaded from SAP. A separate guide is available on how to install, configure, and create certificates for the SAProuter instance.

    For more information about SAProuter tunnel software, see the related links.
  • Configure Secure Network Communications (SNC) for authentication and encryption of the connections between SAP® ERP and your SAProuter instance. SNC configuration is optional and can be omitted.

Differences between SAP® ERP and the on-premises WmSAP

SAP® ERP provides most of the features available in the on-premises WmSAP. Sometimes, you might have to use workarounds, while some others might have restrictions. Limitations will be removed in future releases.

The deviations and restrictions to keep in mind when migrating from WmSAP to SAP® ERP are listed down.

  • Asynchronous SAP ALE and RFC notifications are not supported in SAP® ERP. It might be available in future releases.

    Workaround- Substitute asynchronous SAP ALE and RFC notifications with synchronous notifications.

  • Internal, undocumented administration services (wm.sap.*) in WmSAP are not available in SAP® ERP.

    Workaround- Raise a request with IBM for new SAP® ERP public services with similar functionality if some administration services are required for migrating the existing WmSAP application to webMethods Integration.

  • WmSAP public services accepting the complete node name (package and folder/service name) as input parameters might not be supported.
    • For example, the register or unregister routing callback services - pub.sap.idoc.routing:registerService, pub.sap.idoc.routing:unregisterService are not supported in webMethods Integration.

      Workaround- Use the Routing-Mapping screen instead of using register and unregister services.

    • Another example is the pub.sap.transport.IS:OutboundProcess service. This service is not fully supported in webMethods Integration because it expects the folder name and service name of a Flow (or Java™) service to be run either on local or remote on-premises webMethods Integration Server.

  • Execute ACLs are not supported in webMethods Integration. In the on-premises webMethods Integration Server setup, incoming SAP notification requests are run under the account of the webMethods Integration Server user having the same username as the SAP user who sent the request. It allows the usage of run ACLs to limit the execution of notification services to specific users alone.

    Information- SAP notification services can run when requests are sent by any SAP user.

  • Custom Java services are not supported in webMethods Integration.

    Workaround- Contact IBM if the migrated WmSAP applications require custom Java services and clarify if the Java services can be substituted with Flow services or existing public webMethods Integration services.

  • WmSAP template Java services (with editable Java source code) in sample.sap.* are not available in webMethods Integration.

Common Questions

How to create SAP® ERP accounts?
  1. Select Connectors from the menu.
  2. Search and select the SAP® ERP from the Available Connectors section. It takes you to the Add account configuration screen.
  3. Provide the following details:
    • Connection alias - Provide a suitable name for the account you want to add.
    • User name - Provide the SAP registered user name.
    • Password - Provide the password for the SAP registered user.
    • Client - Provide the 3-digit SAP client number.
    • Repository user name (Optional) - Provide the repository user name.
    • Repository password (Optional) - Provide the password of the repository user.
    • SAP router string (Optional) - Provide the SAP router string.
    • Language - Select the supported language from the list.
    • Description (Optional) - Provide the description.
  4. Click Next.
  5. Select Connection mode setting selection. Click Next.
  6. Provide the details in the Connection mode.
    • If you selected Standard (Default) as the connection mode, provide the following details:
      • Application server- Provide an SAP application server name.
      • System number- Provide an SAP system number (00-99).
    • If you selected Load Balancing as the connection mode, provide the following details
      • Logon group- Provide the name of the group that you want to log in.
      • Message server host- Provide a host name or IP address of the message server.
      • Message server service- Provide an SAP message server service.
      • System Id- Provide an SAP system number (00-99).
    • Click Next.
  7. Verify the connection details. Click Add account and select Done.You can see the configured custom account.
How to create document types for SAP?
  1. Select Configurations > Flow service > Document types.
  2. Click Add Document Type.
  3. In the Add new Document type screen, select SAP®. Click Ok.
  4. In the System ID and document screen, provide the following details.
    • Save As - Provide a suitable name for the Document type you want to add.
    • System ID - Type or select System ID (SID) of the source SAP system.
    • Document type - Select the document type RFC or IDoc.
    • Description - Optional. Provide a description for the document type.
  5. Click Next.
  6. In the Document details screen, provide the following details.
    • If you selected RFC as the Document type, provide the RFC structure - Select the RFC structure from the list of cached names. If cached names are not available, you must type the RFC structure name.
    • If you selected IDoc as the Document type, provide the following details:
      IDoc type
      Select the IDoc type expected by the listener notification from the dropdown list of cached names. If cached names are not available, you must type the IDoc type.
      CIM type(optional)
      Provide a IDoc type extension (CIM type / customer extension type).
      SAP system release(optional)
      Provide the IDoc release.
      Old IDoc type 2 (optional)
      Checked for old version 2 IDocs and cleared for a new version 3 IDoc.
  7. Click Save and continue.
  8. Verify the details on the Overview screen and click Done. A new Document Type is created in the Document Types page.
Note: You can add, edit, delete, or copy a document type from the document types page. To edit an existing document type, on the document types page, click Edit icon for the document type.