1Introducing the BEA WebLogic Adapter for SAP
1-2 BEA WebLogic Adapter for SAP User Guide
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 third-party components. BAPIs are called synchronously and return
information. For BAPIs, the client needs to do the appropriate error handling.
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.