Projects:SAP ECC Integration/Specs
Contents |
Overview
The objective of this project is to extend the External Integration Infrastructure to create an Openbravo connector with SAP ECC.
This project will provide the means of communication between Openbravo and a SAP ECC Server. It will also provide utilities to work with iDocs, the data structure used by SAP ECC to exchange information with external systems.
It is not within the scope of this project to build the actual mappings between the Openbravo entities and the SAP ECC entities, but to simplify the definition of those mappings, and to enable its extension.
SAP ECC
SAP ERP Central Component (SAP ECC) is an enterprise resource planning software which consists in several modules that provide the organizations with control over their key business processes.
iDocs
SAP ECC exchange information with external systems using iDocs. It is very similar to XML, but its syntax is different.
There are different iDoc types for different entities. This folder contains the description of some of them. For instance, this spreadsheet describes the structure of the WP_PLU, the iDoc type that SAP ECC uses to represent products, and this is an example of an WP_PLU iDoc.
The SAP ECC Integration module must be able to process iDocs and parse them to obtain the list of properties they contain, and to build an iDoc based on a record to be exported and the mappings defined for the record entity.
The exported iDocs should be properly formatted using an XML formatter.
iDoc Extensions
SAP Supports the extension of iDocs, either by adding properties to an existing segment, or by adding complete new segments. This module must support extensions modules, both for imported and exported iDocs.
Communication with a SAP ECC Server
The SAP ECC Integration module must be able to exchange information (iDocs) between Openbravo and a SAP ECC server.
The module must support two means of communication: a FTP or shared folder and via the Java Connector (JCo) middleware.
It is possible to configure the SAP server so that it places the iDocs to be exported from SAP to an external system (in this case Openbravo) in the OUTBOUND subfolder of a given shared folder, and the iDocs to be imported to SAP in the INBOUND subfolder.
Java Connector (JCo)
The SAP Java Connector (SAP JCo) is a middleware component that enables the development of SAP-compatible components and applications in Java. This link contains a more detailed description of JCo.
Debug
This module should also provide a debug mode, to test the SAP ECC Connector without an active SAP ECC Server. Instead, the iDocs should be read from and written into a folder in the local filesystem.