SAP ABAP NetWeaver Tutorial

What does the interface mean?

Interface means the communication interface between different systems in an enterprise enviroment. SAP provides a comprehensive solution for different industries. A company still needs a lot other systems to make daily work more effectively. Different SAP systems also need to communicate each other to exchange business data.

SAP provides several technologies to achieve this goal. Below is list of these technologies.

1. BAPI/Remote Function module
2. ALE/EDI/IDoc
3. Use middleware like PI(Process Integration)
4. File System

BAPI/RFM

This is basic interface technologies based on SAP RFC technology. RFC(Remote Function Call) uses CPI-C protocol to communicate. SAP also provides library for other language other than ABAP. For Java, it has a library called JCo.

ALE/EDI

ALE(Application Link Enabling) and EDI(Electronic Data Interchange). It is a little bit confusing about the two names. Both of them are used to exchange data between systems and both are used IDoc format to transfer data. The difference is that ALE is used to exchange data between different systems in the same company, while EDI is used to transfer data to another company like a customer or vendor. For EDI scenario, the IDoc is sent to an external subsystem and converted into an EDI standard (EDIFACT; ODETTE or ANSI X.12).

What is IDoc?

IDoc(Intermeiate document) is a document format that used to exchange business data between different SAP systems and other systems. It contains control record, data record and status record.

PI(Process Integration)

PI can be used to develop, monitor the data exchange data in a company or cross companies. As point to point integration makes the IT scenario more an more complex. SAP NetWeaver Process Integration (SAP NetWeaver PI) provides SOA foundation capabilities for customers. Using SAP NetWeaver PI, customers can leverage enterprise services delivered by SAP and also enable their existing investments in third-party and legacy applications by integrating them into their landscape and also service enabling the functions delivered in these applications.

Below is an architecture of SAP PI.