Classic SAP ERP Technologies for ABAP

The iWay Application Adapter for SAP ERP is designed to provide standard access to SAP ERP interfaces such as Remote Function Call (RFC) modules, BAPIs (Business Application Programming Interfaces), and IDocs (Intermediate Documents), that are used to support existing business processes.

The adapter only supports Enterprise Central Components (ECC) APIs that are accessed by classic SAP ERP technologies. If you require support for additional SAP ERP functionality and components, please contact your iWay Software Sales Representative.

These business components and methods are available to the adapter as requests of SAP ERP and to the event adapter when SAP ERP invokes its remote requests and work in the following ways:

• Business Application Programming Interfaces (BAPIs). Interfaces within the business framework that are used to link SAP ERP components to one another or to third-party components. BAPIs are called synchronously and return information.
• Remote Function Call (RFC) Modules. SAP ERP application interfaces that enable clients to invoke SAP ERP technologies and receive responses.

  Note: Depending on the release or service pack installed, certain RFCs may not exist in your particular SAP ERP system. Therefore, the examples included in this documentation may not be relevant to your system. If this is the case, you should use the examples as a general reference for adapter functionality and choose an RFC that exists within your SAP ERP application environment.

  As described in SAP Release Note 109533, SAP ERP Function Modules (RFCs) can be delivered with different release statuses. SAP ERP supports only RFCs that are marked with the Released for Customer status. There is no claim to the continued existence/functionality of modules not marked with this status. For more information on the status of a specific function module, consult the SAP Service Marketplace.

• Intermediate Documents (IDocs). The logical messages that correspond to different business processes. They enable different application systems to be linked by a message-based interface. The IDoc type indicates the SAP ERP format to use to transfer the data for a business transaction. An IDoc is a real business process in the form of an IDoc type that can transfer several message types. An IDoc type is described by the following components:
  • Control records. A control record contains data that identifies the sender, the receiver, and the IDoc structure. An IDoc contains one control record.
  • Data records. A data record consists of a fixed administration part and a data part (segment). The number and format of the segments can be different for each IDoc type.
  • Status records. A status record describes the processing stages through which an IDoc passes.

    The following scenario is an example of IDoc functionality and its components:

    Purchase order number 4711 is to be sent to a vendor through an IDoc. The purchase order corresponds to the logical message ORDERS. The physical IDoc type ORDERS01 IDoc number 0815 is created and has the status records created and passed to port ok. If a STATUS IDoc is used, the IDoc status is then updated to dispatched ok.