1 Introducing the BEA WebLogic Adapter for SAP
The BEA WebLogic Adapter for SAP is designed specifically to provide simple, standard access to business objects such as SAP Remote Function Call (RFC) modules, BAPIs (Business Application Programming Interfaces), and IDocs (Intermediate Documents), which are used to support existing business processes.These business objects are available to the service adapter as requests of SAP, and are available to the event adapter when SAP invokes its remote requests. They work in the following way:
Remote Function Call (RFC) modules are sessions established from the calling application to the SAP system. A user ID is logged on and then a call is issued, triggering processing inside the call. When the call is processed it usually returns information, such as a return code and application data. The calling application waits for processing to complete, then receives the data. It continues processing, taking the result into account. It can even issue multiple RFCs during one session.
Business Application Programming Interfaces (BAPIs) are interfaces within the business framework, which are used to link SAP components to one another or to
Intermediate Documents (IDocs) are documents that are processed asynchronously– that is, no information is returned to the client. As soon as one asynchronous method is involved, the overall communication flow is asynchronous. As a result, the sender should not be on standby awaiting an answer.
The BEA WebLogic Adapter for SAP quickly and easily integrates your SAP IDocs, RFCs, and BAPIs via WebLogic Integration workflows. The adapter and WebLogic Integration provide all the functionality you need to integrate your mission critical SAP system with other enterprise applications. Adapter benefits include:
Eliminating the need for custom coding.
Running SAP IDocs, BAPIs, and RFCs both synchronously and asynchronously from WebLogic Integration.
Allowing SAP to initiate bidirectional business process management workflows using the event adapter.
Creating application views directly from SAP metadata using BEA Application Explorer.