Tib Adsap Concepts

TIBCO Activematrix® Adapter

for SAP

Concepts

Software Release 6.0February 2009

Important Information

SOME TIBCO SOFTWARE EMBEDS OR BUNDLES OTHER TIBCO SOFTWARE. USE OF SUCH EMBEDDED OR BUNDLED TIBCO SOFTWARE IS SOLELY TO ENABLE THE FUNCTIONALITY (OR PROVIDE LIMITED ADD-ON FUNCTIONALITY) OF THE LICENSED TIBCO SOFTWARE. THE EMBEDDED OR BUNDLED SOFTWARE IS NOT LICENSED TO BE USED OR ACCESSED BY ANY OTHER TIBCO SOFTWARE OR FOR ANY OTHER PURPOSE.

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This document contains confidential information that is subject to U.S. and international copyright laws and treaties. No part of this document may be reproduced in any form without the written authorization of TIBCO Software Inc.

TIB, TIBCO, TIBCO Adapter, Predictive Business, Information Bus, The Power of Now, TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks, TIBCO Rendezvous, TIBCO Administrator, TIBCO Designer, TIBCO Runtime Agent, TIBCO Hawk, TIBCO Enterprise Message Service, TIBCO Designer Add-in for TIBCO Business Studio, TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Grid, TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus, TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks Service Engine, and TIBCO Business Studio are either registered trademarks or trademarks of TIBCO Software Inc. in the United States and/or other countries.

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THIS DOCUMENT COULD INCLUDE TECHNICAL INACCURACIES OR TYPOGRAPHICAL ERRORS. CHANGES ARE PERIODICALLY ADDED TO THE INFORMATION HEREIN; THESE CHANGES WILL BE INCORPORATED IN NEW EDITIONS OF THIS DOCUMENT. TIBCO SOFTWARE INC. MAY MAKE IMPROVEMENTS AND/OR CHANGES IN THE PRODUCT(S) AND/OR THE PROGRAM(S) DESCRIBED IN THIS DOCUMENT AT ANY TIME.

THE CONTENTS OF THIS DOCUMENT MAY BE MODIFIED AND/OR QUALIFIED, DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY, BY OTHER DOCUMENTATION WHICH ACCOMPANIES THIS SOFTWARE, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY RELEASE NOTES AND "READ ME" FILES.

Copyright © 1999-2009 TIBCO Software Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

TIBCO Software Inc. Confidential Information

TIBCO ActiveMatrix Adapter for SAP Concepts

| iii

Contents

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii

Related Documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii

TIBCO Product Documentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii

Other TIBCO Product Documentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii

Third Party Documentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

Terminology and Acronyms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . x

How to Contact TIBCO Customer Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xii

Chapter 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

What is an Adapter? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Adapter Components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Adapter Key terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Adapter Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Publication Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Subscription Service. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Request-Response Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Request-Response Invocation Service. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Adapter Services Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Choosing an Adapter Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Chapter 2 TIBCO ActiveMatrix Adapter for SAP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

SAP Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

SAP Interfaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Adapter Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Installation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Deployment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Logical Process Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Adapter Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Publication Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Subscription Service. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Request-Response Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21


iv | Contents

Request-Response Invocation Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Adapter Capabilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Message Transports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Multithreading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Connection Management. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Internationalization. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Adapter and SAP Interaction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Business Application Programming Interface (BAPI). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Remote Function Call (RFC) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Application Link Enabling - Intermediate Documents (ALE/IDoc) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Advanced Features. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

IDoc Filtering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

BAPI Transactional Support. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Data Chunking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Event Driven Inbound Connection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Inbound tRFC/IDoc reporting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Support for Multiple Application Servers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Multithreading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Replacing Control Fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Dynamic Subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Validation of Destinations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

QRFC Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Dynamic Application Server Connection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Chapter 3 Adapter Infrastructure Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

TIBCO Runtime Agent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

TIBCO Domain Utility. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

TIBCO Designer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

TIBCO Administrator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

TIBCO Administration Domain. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

TIBCO Administration Server. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

TIBCO Administrator GUI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

TIBCO Hawk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

Adapter Microagents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

TIBCO Business Studio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

ActiveMatrix Resource Wizard. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

Composite Element Editors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

Debugger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

Service Assembly Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

TIBCO ActiveMatrix Administrator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

TIBCO ActiveMatrix Administrator Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

Enterprise and Environment Administration. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

Service Administration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51


Contents | v

Appendix A SAP ERP System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

The SAP ERP System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

Exchanging Business Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61


vi | Contents


| vii

Preface

This document describes TIBCO ActiveMatrix Adapter for SAP.

Topics

• Related Documents, page viii

• Terminology and Acronyms, page x

• How to Contact TIBCO Customer Support, page xii


viii | Preface

Related Documents

This section lists documentation resources.

TIBCO Product Documentation

The following documents form the TIBCO ActiveMatrix Adapter for SAP Documentation set:

• TIBCO ActiveMatrix Adapter for SAP Concepts — Read this manual to gain an understanding of adapters in general that you can apply to the various tasks you may undertake.

• TIBCO ActiveMatrix Adapter for SAP Installation— Read this manual to learn how to install TIBCO ActiveMatrix Adapter for SAP.

• TIBCO ActiveMatrix Adapter for SAP Configuration and Deployment— This manual explains how to create and configure adapter projects. Information on deploying adapter projects is also included.

• TIBCO ActiveMatrix Adapter for SAP Examples— Read this manual to work through the examples provided with the adapter.

• TIBCO ActiveMatrix Adapter for SAP Release Notes— Read this document for information about new features, deprecated features, and open and closed issues.

Other TIBCO Product Documentation

You may find it useful to read the documentation for the following TIBCO products.

• TIBCO Designer™

• TIBCO Administrator™

• TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks™

• TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks Service Engine

• TIBCO Rendezvous®

• TIBCO Enterprise Message Service™

• TIBCO Hawk®

• TIBCO Adapter™ SDK

• TIBCO Runtime Agent™


Related Documents | ix

• TIBCO ActiveMatrix® Service Grid

• TIBCO ActiveMatrix® Service Bus

• TIBCO Business Studio™

Third Party Documentation

• SAP R/3: Implementation Guide by Bradley D. Hiquet, available from Kelly-Lacey & Associates Inc. This is “A Manager’s Guide to Understanding SAP” that emphasizes the user’s point of view. Printed in 1998 by Macmillan Technological Publishing.

• SAP R/3 Business Blueprint by Thomas Curran and Gerhard Keller. Printed in 1998 by Prentice Hall PTR.

• SAP R/3 System, A Client/Server Technology by Rudiger Buck-Emden. This is a general technical overview that is easy to read. Printed in 1996 by Addison-Wesley.


x | Preface

Terminology and Acronyms

Term Definition

ABAP Advanced Business Application Programming is a language in SAP used to write SAP specific code.

ALE/IDoc Application Link Enabling/Intermediate Documents.

API Application Program Interface.

Application Server The server on which the SAP processes run.

BAPI Business API (Functionally equivalent to RFC).

CIF Certified Intermediate Format.

Component A self-contained replaceable functional unit of the adapter that provides a set of interfaces. TIBCO ActiveMatrix Adapter for SAP has two kinds of components; r3Outbound and r3Inbound. r3Outbound encapsulates functionality for outbound communication with the SAP system while r3Inbound encapsulates the functionality for inbound communication with the SAP system.

EDI Electronic Data Interchange.

EMS Enterprise Message Service

Gateway Server A server used to exchange data with the SAP system.

Inbound Instance An adapter configuration listening for messages inbound to SAP. Inbound instances transfer messages from the TIBCO environment to the SAP system.

Interface A functional sub-unit of the adapter that exposes one or more adapter services. For example, the RFCServer interface exposes RFC/BAPI Request-Response Invocation services.

JMS JAVA Messaging Service

MBCS Multi-byte character string.

One Way Invocation protocol

One way invocation protocol allows you to invoke the BAPI/RFC in the SAP system without waiting for a reply from the system.

Outbound Instance An adapter configuration listening for messages outbound from SAP. Outbound instances transfer messages from SAP to the TIBCO environment.


Terminology and Acronyms | xi

RV TIBCO Rendezvous™ protocol; also in certain contexts refers to reliable message quality of service, as opposed to certified message.

RFC The SAP Remote Function Call Interface.

RFC Client A SAP term for any program that can post RFCs/BAPIs/IDocs from an external system into the SAP system.

RVCM TIBCO Rendezvous certified message quality of service.

RFC Server A SAP term for any external program that can accept and process RFCs/BAPIs/IDocs from the SAP system.

RVDQ TIBCO Rendezvous distributed queue.

SAP R/3 Native data

All SAP data that the adapter interacts with. It consists of RFC data types. This includes IDocs received as RFC tables in an RFC function call.

SSL Secure Sockets Layer.

TID Transaction ID. A globally unique identifier used by transactional RFCs to ensure exactly-once execution of a transaction.

TIDManager Transaction Identifier Manager.

Term Definition


xii | Preface

How to Contact TIBCO Customer Support

For comments or problems with this manual or the software it addresses, please contact TIBCO Support as follows.

• For an overview of TIBCO Support, and information about getting started with TIBCO Support, visit this site:

http://www.tibco.com/services/support

• If you already have a valid maintenance or support contract, visit this site:

https://support.tibco.com

Entry to this site requires a user name and password. If you do not have a user name, you can request one.

http://www.tibco.com/services/support

https://support.tibco.com


| 1

Chapter 1 Introduction

This chapter introduces adapters by explaining adapter key features, services, and functionality.

Topics

• What is an Adapter?, page 2

• Adapter Components, page 3

• Adapter Services, page 5

• Choosing an Adapter Service, page 7


2 | Introduction

What is an Adapter?

To deploy the best solution for each aspect of your business, you usually have to purchase applications from several different application vendors. Unfortunately, vendors typically have their own way to format and expose data. Therefore integrating the various applications across your enterprise poses significant challenges.

An adapter provides a bridge between an application and your TIBCO integration environment. Using a no-coding approach to integration, TIBCO Adapters enable packaged applications, databases, and other technologies to become active participants in the enterprise information flow, regardless of their data formats or communication protocols. Integration of new applications does not require programming skills and does not interfere with existing infrastructure.

Adapters isolate the application from more complex actions. Message transformation and business process automation can be handled once the data is published to the TIBCO infrastructure.

Adapters allow data to be exchanged among different technologies.

• Adapters are available for off-the-shelf applications from leading vendors. Each adapter integrates with at least one, and usually several, of the interfaces exposed by the vendor application.

• Database adapters enable an enterprise’s database to initiate important business processes based on exception data they identify. Database adapters also make data available to the enterprise.

• Mainframe adapters enable real-time two way communication between them and the rest of a companies’ business applications and databases.

• Adapters can also enable integration with component or object development models and other messaging technologies.


Adapter Components | 3

Adapter Components

The adapter can run either as a standalone process or as a service. When run as a service, the adapter participates in the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) environment.

The adapter components are:

• Standalone

Using this component you create adapter projects which run as a standalone process. This adapter component is referred to as the standalone adapter.

Standalone adapter projects are created and configured using TIBCO Designer and deployed using TIBCO Administrator.

• Adapter Service Engine

Using this component you create and configure adapter projects that can be deployed as a service in the TIBCO ActiveMatrix environment. This adapter component is referred to as the adapter service engine.

Adapter service engine projects are created using TIBCO Business Studio and deployed using TIBCO ActiveMatrix Administrator.

The adapter component is wired with other composite elements in the ActiveMatrix SOA Project.

Existing standalone adapter configurations can also be deployed as services.

Throughout this book, references to an adapter include both the standalone and adapter service engine components.


4 | Introduction

Adapter Key terms

The following key terms are used when describing adapter interactions in this manual.

• A palette is a standalone adapter component that contains the screens used to gather input at design-time when configuring an adapter with a service. The palette is accessed via TIBCO Designer.

• A project is a collection of all configured adapter resources. A project contains configuration information for one or more adapter instances. A local project is typically used at design-time for testing adapter instances. For production, a project is typically managed by an administration server provided by the TIBCO Administrator for the standalone adapter and TIBCO ActiveMatrix Administrator for the adapter service engine.

• An .ear of an application contains global variables with values set at design-time by the standalone adapter. The global variables can be changed at deployment at the application level, service level, or service instance level.

• Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a software architecture in which applications and data are decomposed into discrete, operationally independent services, which can be executed in a highly distributed manner.

• A business object is the representation of the data model of the entities that the adapter service engine connects to. The business objects are downloaded during also the design phase and are used by the adapter services.

• A container is an ActiveMatrix runtime entity that hosts component implementations and service bindings.

• A service assembly is an ActiveMatrix deployment package. It contains service units and a descriptor that indicates the container into which each service unit is to be deployed. The suffix of a service assembly file is .saf.

• The ActiveMatrix services are described in documents expressed in Web Services Description Language (WSDL). The WSDL documents specify the messages that are required to access a service.

• During any service interaction, each service will adopt one of two roles: provider or consumer. A service provider publishes a WSDL document that describes the services it offers. A service consumer uses the WSDL document to determine the available services and the messages required to access the services. A message exchange pattern (MEP) defines the sequence and cardinality of messages sent between the provider and the consumer.


Adapter Services | 5

Adapter Services

Adapters are responsible for making information from different applications available to other applications across an enterprise. To do so, an adapter is configured to provide one or more of the following services:

Publication Service

An adapter publication service recognizes when business events happen in a vendor application, and asynchronously sends out the event data in realtime to interested systems in the TIBCO environment.

For example, an adapter can publish an event each time a new customer account is added to an application. Other applications that receive the event can then update their records just as the original application did.

Subscription Service

An adapter subscription service asynchronously performs an action—such as updating business objects or invoking native APIs—on a vendor application. The adapter service listens to external business events, which trigger the appropriate action.

Referring to the previous example, an adapter subscription service can listen for customer record creation events (happening in an application and published to the TIBCO infrastructure) and update another application.

Request-Response Service

In addition to asynchronously publishing and subscribing to events, an adapter can be used for synchronously retrieving data from or executing transactions within a vendor application. After the action is performed in the vendor application, the adapter service sends a response back to the requester with either the results of the action or a confirmation that the action occurred. This entire process is called request-response, and it is useful for actions such as adding or deleting business objects.

In the next example, an adapter receives a request message from the TIBCO infrastructure and sends it to an application. The adapter gets a response from the application and returns it.


6 | Introduction

Request-Response Invocation Service

An adapter request-response invocation service is similar to the request-response service, except that the roles are reversed. The vendor application is now the requester or initiator of the service, instead of the provider of the service. The adapter service acts as a proxy, giving the vendor application the ability to invoke synchronously functionality on an external system.

For example, the adapter sending a request message from application Y to application X. After it processes the message, it is returned to the adapter, which sends the response back to application Y.

Adapter Services Summary

The next table summarizes the services introduced in this section.

Table 1 Adapter Services Summary

Service Initiator Target Event Mode

Publishing service

(sends to target)

Vendor application

TIBCO infrastructure

Asynchronous

Subscribing service

(gets from initiator)


Vendor application

Asynchronous

Request-response service

(gets from initiator, waits for response then sends response to target)


Vendor application

Synchronous

Request-response invocation service

(sends to target, waits for response, then sends response to initiator)

Vendor application


Synchronous


Choosing an Adapter Service | 7

Choosing an Adapter Service

A business integration scenario drives the choice of one adapter service or another. This section provides a simple flow chart that helps you to choose the service to use. Not all adapters provide all services and some adapters may provide additional services not listed here.

Consider the following environment that involves application X, an adapter, and another application:

Figure 1 Choosing an Adapter Service: Example

In this scenario, data must be exchanged between the application X and another application. The other application could be a customer management system, such as PeopleSoft, or another TIBCO application, such as TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks.

To decide the adapter service to configure in the adapter, start by finding out where the scenario begins—what triggers it. Is the scenario triggered by an event inside the application X, or inside the other application?

For example, when a new customer account is created in application X, must the account information also be propagated via the adapter to the other application? Or does a batch business process in TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks need information from application X to generate some report?

This question is the starting point of the decision chart provided below:

Subnet

Other

Application

Machine BMachine A

SAP R/3 System

TIBCO ActiveMatrix

Adapter for SAP


8 | Introduction

Figure 2 Choosing an Adapter Service

Working through the decision chart, if the business process is the creation of a customer record in application X and if many other applications need to be updated when the event occurs, but no acknowledgements are required, the adapter’s publication service should be used.

where is

process

initiated?

application X

must

response

required?

application X another application

update another

application

obtain information

from another application

business process

starts

update one or

many

publication servicerequest-response

invocation service

many

subscription

service

request-response

service

No Yes

acknowledgem

ent required?

only one

no Yes


| 9

Chapter 2 TIBCO ActiveMatrix Adapter for SAP

This chapter introduces TIBCO ActiveMatrix Adapter for SAP by providing background information about features and components. TIBCO ActiveMatrix Adapter for SAP enables SAP systems to exchange real-time business data with the TIBCO environment.

Topics

• SAP Overview, page 10

• Adapter Overview, page 11

• Adapter Services, page 17

• Adapter Capabilities, page 26

• Adapter and SAP Interaction, page 28

• Advanced Features, page 30


10 | TIBCO ActiveMatrix Adapter for SAP

SAP Overview

SAP is a provider of client-server Enterprise Resource Planning solutions. It is a transaction-based system, encompassing many aspects of information systems such as Sales and Distribution, Purchasing, Human Resources and others.

SAP Interfaces

The adapter supports the most common SAP integration interfaces - BAPI, RFC and ALE/IDocs, which are described below in brief. A basic understanding of these three integration interfaces helps you appreciate the capabilities of the adapter.

• BAPI (Business Application Programming) — BAPIs are the business methods exposed by SAP business objects. This interface is best used with the adapter for performing real time queries and updates to and from the SAP system. For example, creation of a sales order in SAP system using BAPI_SALESORDER_CREATEFROMDAT2. BAPIs are SAP's recommended integration interface over RFCs (Remote Function Call).

• RFC (Remote Functions Call) — The RFC interface allows non-SAP and SAP applications to execute SAP Advanced Business Application Programming (ABAP) functions that have been RFC-enabled. They are similar to BAPIs in functionality but are not attached to SAP Business Objects. There are two types of RFCs in SAP:

— Synchronous RFCs — Used to send messages to an external system and receive replies. They are also used to query SAP system from an external system or to query an external system from a SAP system.

— Transactional RFCs (tRFCs) — Used to send or receive transactional data to and from the SAP system.

• ALE/IDoc (Application Link Enabling/Intermediate Documents) — IDocs are document containers for business transactional data, such as sales orders (example: ORDERS01) and order invoices (example: INVOIC02). ALE helps achieve cross-business functionality and facilitates the event driven, asynchronous exchange of information directly out of business transactions. IDocs can also be sent or received transactionally.


Adapter Overview | 11

Adapter Overview

TIBCO ActiveMatrix Adapter for SAP enables SAP systems to seamlessly integrate with the rest of the enterprise in a TIBCO environment - a suite of products to integrate applications within the enterprise, to reach partners beyond the enterprise, and to connect with other enterprises. The following sections give a brief overview of the adapter components. This component is referred to as the standalone adapter.

TIBCO ActiveMatrix Adapter Service Engine for SAP acts as a gateway for TIBCO ActiveMatrix Adapter for SAP to the SOA world. TIBCO ActiveMatrix Adapter Service Engine for SAP provides a container to deploy adapter configurations. This component is referred to as the adapter service engine.

Installation

The standalone adapter and the adapter service engine are installed separately.

Install the standalone adapter before installing the adapter service engine.

See TIBCO ActiveMatrix Adapter for SAP Installation and TIBCO ActiveMatrix Adapter Service Engine for SAP Installation for more information.

Configuration

You start the design time phase by creating an adapter project. The design time environment for the standalone adapter is TIBCO Designer and that for the adapter service engine is TIBCO Business Studio.

During the design phase, the adapter project connects to the SAP system to schema belonging to the IDocs, RFCs, or BAPIs. These schema are used by the adapter services in the project.

Additionally you create and configure adapter services, connections to the SAP system, and logging options.

Deployment

Once the adapter has been configured, it can be deployed. A deployed adapter instance is referred to as a run-time adapter.

The run-time adapter application comprises:

• Outbound Adapter — Typically, an SAP application outbound RFC/BAPI call or ALE workflow initiates an outbound message to the adapter. The adapter



then extracts RFC parameters, performs basic data type conversion (if necessary) and publishes the message to the TIBCO environment. The adapter can be configured to initiate a remote request to another RFC server application. In the case of remote requests, replies are posted back to the calling RFC within the SAP system.

• Inbound Adapter — The adapter receives an inbound request from the TIBCO environment on a predetermined subject or destination. When a message is received, data conversion to SAP takes place, and a call is dispatched to the SAP system through an appropriate RFC function handler.



TIDManager

The TID Manager prevents duplicate processing of IDocs and tRFCs in case of communication errors that occur when an IDoc or tRFC is executed in the SAP system. The usage of the TID Manager is recommended when using more than one adapter instance or if running the adapter in a multi-threaded mode.

Figure 3 TID Manager

For the adapter service engine, the TIDManager runs outside the TIBCO ActiveMatrix environment as shown in the following figure:

TIBCO Environment

SAP System

TIBCO

ActiveMatrix

Adapter for SAP

Message

Transactional RFC (tRFC)

TID

ManagerTIBCO

ActiveMatrix

Adapter for SAP

Message



Figure 4 Adapter Service Engine: TID Manager

Transactional RFC (tRFC)

SAP System

TIBCO

ActiveMatrix

Adapter Service

Engine for SAP

TID

Manager

TIBCO

ActiveMatrix

Adapter Service

Engine for SAP

Messaging

TIBCO Environment



Logical Process Architecture

The following figure shows the logical connectivity between SAP systems and the TIBCO environment using the adapter.

Figure 5 Logical Process Architecture

In the figure the two servers on the left are separate physical computers that host SAP systems. Software components indicated by shadowed boxes, such as Outbound SAP Adapter 1, are adapter configurations that can run on a single computer or can be distributed. The lines that connect the adapter components to SAP System instances are either direct physical connections or connections through a gateway and router.

The number of outbound (Publication Service) and inbound (Subscription Service) adapters is not limited by software constraints, and can be increased to handle message volume increases.

Outbound Adapter 1

Outbound Adapter 2

Outbound Adapter N

Inbound Adapter 1

Inbound Adapter 2

Inbound Adapter N

TIDManager

Load-balanced

Inbound Adapters

TIBCO Environment

SAP System

Instance

SAP System

Instance

Outbound Adapters

TIDManager



The following figure shows the TIBCO environment with the adapter service engines running within the ActiveMatrix environment and connecting to the TIDManager that runs outside the ActiveMatrix environment.

Figure 6 Logical Process Architecture: Adapter Service Engines

Outbound Adapter

Component 1Outbound Adapter

Component 2Outbound Adapter

Component N

Inbound Adapter

Component 1

Inbound Adapter

Component 2Inbound Adapter

Component N

TIDManager

Load-balanced

Inbound Adapters

TIBCO Environment

SAP System

Instance

SAP System

Instance

Load-balanced

Outbound Adapters

TIDManager

Me

ss

ag

ing



Adapter Services

In TIBCO terminology, an adapter offers services to the host application and to the TIBCO environment. A service broadly encapsulates routing rules for messages handled by the service and also custom configuration information.

The adapter offers a separate service for each BAPI, RFC, and IDoc type configured in the adapter.

This section discusses the services provided by the adapter with common usage scenarios drawn from real-life customer requirements.

The adapter provides the following services:

• Publication Service (Publisher)

• Subscription Service (Subscriber)

• Request-Response Service (RPC Client)

• Request-Response Invocation Service (RPC Server)

The terms by which the adapter service engine refers to the services are in parenthesis.

Publication Service

This service is used to publish information from SAP system. Only IDocs can be published. Multiple publication services can be configured to handle different IDoc types.

Example: ORDERS02 IDoc can be used to publish a sales order from the SAP system and MATMAS01 IDoc can be used to publish material information.



Figure 7 Typical Publication Service Flow

For example, material master records can be published to a legacy inventory management system in the enterprise, and customer master records transferred to an enterprise CRM application from the same adapter configuration.

An adapter with IDoc services can be configured to receive IDocs from multiple SAP systems or multiple RFC destinations from the same SAP system. This is useful for enterprises that need to integrate multiple SAP systems.

The adapter provides a rich variety of IDoc publication format options. IDocs may be processed and transferred in a completely self-describing format easily understood by partner systems. This facilitates straightforward mapping to the partner's data formats. IDoc services can be configured to transfer data in SAP's native table format and a variety of other formats.

IDoc services may also be configured to process IDocs individually or in batches. The former is typically suited for real-time integration while the latter suits a batch offload scenario.

The following figure shows the service flow for the adapter service engine.

IDoc SDPIO01 Publication Service

TIBCO Environment

SAP System

TIBCO

ActiveMatrix

Adapter for SAP

Material pick,pack and ship information

Enterprise

Warehouse

Management System



Figure 8 Adapter Service Engine: Publisher Service Flow

Subscription Service

This service is used to subscribe to messages from the TIBCO environment and post them into the SAP system. Only IDocs can be posted to the SAP system. Multiple subscription services can be configured to handle different IDoc types.

Example: Sales information can be subscribed to and posted as ORDERS02 IDoc in the SAP system.

SAP System

TIBCO ActiveMatrix

Adapter Service

Engine for SAP

Material pick,pack and ship information

Enterprise

Warehouse

Management System

TIBCO Environment

IDoc SDPIO01 Publication Service

Messaging



Figure 9 Typical Subscription Service Flow

Multiple IDoc subscription services can be configured and each one may receive IDocs from one or more systems in the TIBCO environment. For instance, one adapter configuration can receive and post Sales Order documents from a legacy enterprise order management application to the SAP system. It can also receive and post updates to Materials master data from an enterprise inventory management application to the SAP system.

An adapter with IDoc subscription services may also be configured to connect to one or more SAP systems.

The IDoc subscription services offers a wide variety of IDoc formats for subscription suited for real-time and batch postings. By supporting and being completely compatible with IDoc publication service message formats, the IDoc subscription service allows easy end-to-end SAP integration.

IDoc SDPIID01 Subscription Service

TIBCO Environment

SAP System

TIBCO

Activematrix

Adapter for SAP

Confirmation of pick, pack and ship

operations

Enterprise

Warehouse

Management System



Figure 10 Adapter Service Engine: Subscriber Service Flow

Request-Response Service

This service is used to execute RFC and BAPI requests in the SAP system. Multiple adapter services can be configured for different BAPIs and RFCs.

Example: BAPI_CUSTOMER_GETDETAIL1 can be used to request the details of an existing customer from the SAP system and BAPI_SALESORDER_CREATEFROMDAT1 can be used to create a sales order in the SAP system.

Figure 11 Typical Request-Response Service Flow

IDoc SDPIID01 Subscription Service

SAP System

TIBCO Activematrix

Adapter Service

Engine for SAP

Confirmation of pick, pack and ship

operations

Enterprise

Warehouse

Management System

TIBCO Environment

Messaging

BAPI_SALESORDER_

CREATEFROMDAT1

Service

TIBCO Environment

SAP System

Request

to create

Sales

order

Sales

order

number

Enterprise Order Management

System

TIBCO ActiveMatrix Adapter for

SAP



For instance, a BAPI_SALESORDER_CREATEFROMDAT1 adapter service can be invoked to create a sales order in the SAP system and get back the sales order number in a synchronous fashion. Or, the same BAPI service can be invoked via transactions in SAP.

The same adapter instances can be configured to connect to multiple SAP systems and execute different BAPIs/RFCs in different systems. This allows for easy maintenance at runtime because it requires fewer instances of adapters.

BAPIs/RFCs used for querying the SAP system may yield large result sets. For example, a BAPI_SALESORDER_GETLIST service that queries the SAP system for a list of sales orders for a given customer, and a given period of time, may return a large list. Processing such large result sets can be very resource intensive, and could significantly slow down the querying application. The adapter can help alleviate such problems by breaking the result set in packets.

In some scenarios actions to be performed in the SAP system might be dependent upon the calling system's credentials and rights. The adapter can be configured to enable and enforce dynamic logons for individual BAPI/RFC invocations as explained in the section Event-Driven Inbound Connections. In such cases the adapter will not use the static set of SAP connections created at startup. Dynamic logon is also useful when the BAPI service is only invoked occasionally as it avoids having to keep permanent connections to the SAP system.

If the adapter is configured with services for BAPIs requiring explicit commit in the SAP system (like the BAPI_SALESORDER_CREATEFROMDAT1 service), and the adapter has established multiple connections to the SAP system, the adapter must be instructed to maintain connection contexts for the invoked BAPIs for subsequent commit/rollback based on business rules.




Figure 12 Adapter Service Engine: RPC Server

Request-Response Invocation Service

This service is used to invoke RFC and BAPI requests in the TIBCO environment. Multiple adapter services can be configured for different BAPIs and RFCs.

Example: A BAPI_MATERIAL_AVAILABILITY service can be invoked to check for material availability before invoking a BAPI_SALESORDER_CREATEFROMDAT1 service to create a sales order in a remote system using the same adapter.

SAP System

Request

to create

Sales

order

Sales

order

number

Enterprise Order Management

System

TIBCO ActiveMatrix

Adapter Service Engine for SAP

TIBCO Environment

BAPI_SALESORDER_

CREATEFROMDAT1

Service

Messaging



Figure 13 Typical Request-Response Invocation Service Flow

This adapter service supports both synchronous and transactional modes.

Transactional RFC calls are typically made when a series of database operations must be performed in the remote enterprise application. Synchronous BAPI/RFC calls are more generally used for querying remote systems.


Figure 14 RPC Client Service Flow

TIBCO Environment

Validation

Information

Credit card

validation

request

SAP System

Clearing House

TIBCO ActiveMatrix Adapter for

SAP

BAPI_CREDITCARD_

CHECKNUMBER

Service

Validation

Information

Credit card

validation

request

SAP System

Clearing House

TIBCO ActiveMatrix

Adapter Service Engine for SAP

BAPI_CREDITCARD_

CHECKNUMBER

Service

TIBCO Environment

Messaging



Transactional mode requires the adapter to execute a transactional RFC call exactly once and reject duplicates. The adapter provides stable transaction management capabilities through the TIDManager component. The adapter's transaction handling is coupled with the TIBCO Messaging protocols. This ensures that transactions are delivered to the remote system even if the remote system was unavailable at the time of the call.

The same adapter can be configured to receive BAPI/RFC requests from multiple SAP systems or multiple RFC Destinations on the same SAP system. This allows for easier maintenance at runtime because it requires fewer adapters.



Adapter Capabilities

This section describes in detail how the TIBCO ActiveMatrix Adapter for SAP handles each of the following:

• Message Transports

• Multithreading

• Connection Management

• Internationalization

Message Transports

TIBCO Rendezvous and TIBCO Enterprise Message Service can be used to transport messages to and from the standalone adapter.

• TIBCO Rendezvous mode of transport supports the following quality of services:

— Reliable (RV) — This ensures that each multicast or broadcast message is received as long as the physical network and packet recipients are working, and the loss of a message is detected.

— Certified-delivery (RVCM) — Ensures at least once delivery of messages. This guarantees that every certified message reaches its intended recipient in the order sent.

— Distributed Queue (RVDQ) — Designed to deliver a message to one-of-many service listeners (workers). It has incorporated the features of both Certified Messaging and Fault Tolerance. RVDQ senders are ordinary Certified Message senders.

• The JMS mode of transport supports the following messaging protocols (TIBCO Enterprise Message Service must be installed to use the JMS transport):

— Topic — A service publishes to a topic or subscribes to a topic. This type of message protocol is also known as broadcast messaging because messages are sent over the network and received by all interested subscribers, similar to how radio or television signals are broadcast and received.

— Queue — A service sends to a queue or receives from a queue. This message protocol is known as point-to-point because messages sent to a queue are consumed by one and only one receiver. A queue retains all messages sent until such time the messages are consumed or expired. Each message has only one receiver, though multiple receivers can connect to the


Adapter Capabilities | 27

queue. JMS messages use the XML Message wire format only. The JMS mode of transport supports two type of delivery modes, Persistent and Non-Persistent.

Multithreading

The adapter supports multithreading for Publication, Subscription and Request-Response Services. You can configure the number of threads for each type of service under the Adapter Services tab of the instance. Multithreading allows the adapter to simultaneously process multiple, independent events.

You can configure the number of threads required for each client or server connection. The number of threads should be equal to the number of connections required. The maximum limit is eight threads per client connection or server connection.

The tRFC invocations (including IDocs) from the SAP system are handled sequentially by the underlying SAP interface library. Hence all transactional RFCs are sequenced by the adapter as well. Consequently, multiple threads will not contribute to enhanced performance of tRFC Request-Response Invocation services and IDoc Publication services in the adapter.

Connection Management

A loss in the connection between the adapter and the SAP application may be a result of an application error or a connection error.

If the loss in connection is a result of an application error, the adapter terminates. If the loss is a result of a connection error, the adapter will attempt to reconnect to the SAP application. You can specify the maximum number of reconnect attempts.

Internationalization

The adapter supports single-byte, multi-byte and blended codepage installations of the SAP system. The adapter communicates to the Unicode and Non-Unicode SAP systems through the Unicode interface of the SAP RFCSDK libraries.



Adapter and SAP Interaction

The following sections describe the interaction between the adapter and the SAP system.

Business Application Programming Interface (BAPI)

The adapter extracts and stores BAPI schema definitions from the SAP system into the project at design-time. Both standard and custom BAPIs can be downloaded and used in the adapter. Each BAPI is encapsulated by an adapter service, which is used to:

• Execute business events in the SAP system from remote enterprise applications

Example: Use BAPIs to create a Sales order in the SAP system from an order management system receiving orders from the web.

• Trigger business events in a remote enterprise application from the SAP system

Example: the SAP system invokes a BAPI to perform credit-card validation against an external clearing house.

Remote Function Call (RFC)

The adapter extracts and stores RFC schema definitions from the SAP system into the project at design-time. Both standard and custom RFCs can be downloaded and used in the adapter.

The underlying technology for RFCs and BAPIs is the same.

Application Link Enabling - Intermediate Documents (ALE/IDoc)

This interface is typically used with the adapter for asynchronous transfer of business data to and from the SAP system, for example, a batch transfer of sales orders from the SAP system to a data warehouse.

The adapter extracts and stores IDoc metadata for individual IDoc types into the adapter project at design-time. Both Standard IDocs and Custom IDocs are supported.

Each IDoc type definition in the SAP system is encapsulated as an IDoc service in the adapter. An IDoc service can be used to:


Adapter and SAP Interaction | 29

• Send business transaction data from the SAP system in both real-time and batch mode.

Example: Send out shipping notification to a warehouse management system from the SAP system for materials to be picked and packed for shipping.

• Receive business transaction data in the SAP system as IDocs.

Example: A warehouse management system posts a shipping confirmation IDoc into the SAP system after the shipping operation is complete. This confirms the completion of the operation in the SAP system.



Advanced Features

The following sections describe advanced features of the adapter.

Unless specified otherwise, the following features are supported by the standalone adapter and the adapter service engine.

IDoc Filtering

IDocs can be used to send business-related data to external applications. Typically external applications are only interested in limited data whereas in the SAP system most segments of an IDoc are populated. The SAP system provides a filtering of IDoc for the master data (material master, customer master etc.) but it does not provide any filtering mechanism for the transactional data (sales order, purchase order etc.). Using the IDoc filter feature provided in the adapter, data can be filtered at the Field as well as at the Segment level. To be consistent with SAP, the adapter does not allow filtering of mandatory segments in the master IDocs.

The IDoc message can be trimmed in the adapter, which ensures less network traffic as well as less processing work on the receiving application side.

BAPI Transactional Support

The BAPIs introduced with SAP system releases 4.0 and later do not automatically commit their changes as in prior SAP releases. An external program executing a BAPI inside SAP now has a choice to commit or rollback changes. To commit or rollback the changes, every request to SAP for such BAPIs needs to be followed by BAPI_TRANSACTION_COMMIT or BAPI_TRANSACTION_ROLLBACK. Also BAPI_TRANSACTION_COMMIT/BAPI_TRANSACTION_ROLLBACK should be processed with the same handle as that of the actual transaction BAPI. The adapter provides this transactional BAPI support in single-threaded as well as multi threaded mode.

You can commit or rollback changes based on the reply from the transactional BAPI.


Advanced Features | 31

Data Chunking

This feature is used when a large amount of data is returned from SAP system. For example RFC_CUSTOMER_GET with kunnr="*" will return details of all customers. Such large amounts of data can be a bottleneck for the requesting system. In such circumstances data is retrieved in chunks. Instead of making one request to the adapter, you can make multiple requests. The number of records to be retrieved in one request is defined in the request itself. Repeated requests can be made to the adapter until all the required records are fetched.

Some applications may not be able to handle large data objects. Using the data chunking option you can divide the result data set into manageable chunks.

Event Driven Inbound Connection

Using this feature you can force an external application to provide the standalone adapter (and SAP) with a valid login id and password. This feature is configured at the BAPI/RFC level in the adapter. Any call to these BAPIs/RFCs will require proper authentication - the adapter will not service such calls using the default connections established during initialization.

You can use different login information to dispatch different requests. You can login to the SAP system with specific authorization for a particular request. The connection to the SAP system need not be open all the time. Following the call, the connection can be explicitly closed by sending a close connection request.

Inbound tRFC/IDoc reporting

This feature enables the standalone adapter to send explicit reporting messages to the TIBCO environment on the status of Inbound message processed in the adapter. Adapter processing errors, application errors and information upon successful posting to the application are reported back to the TIBCO environment.

The adapter Request-Response (oneway protocol, tRFCs) and Subscription services process Inbound messages that are one way. In other words, senders of messages to these services do not receive explicit acknowledgement from the adapter regarding the status of such messages processed in the adapter. This feature allows sending systems to know the status of every Inbound message processed by these services.



Support for Multiple Application Servers

A single instance of the adapter can exchange messages with multiple application servers both on the inbound (to an SAP system) and outbound (from an SAP system) sides. On the outbound side, the adapter can receive messages from multiple SAP application servers. On the inbound side, the adapter can be configured for multiple BAPI/RFC/IDocs, each interacting with a different application server.

A single adapter instance can serve multiple application servers obviating the need for multiple adapter instances. Load-balancing and fault tolerance across SAP application servers can also be achieved this way.

Multithreading

At startup, threads are dynamically created by the adapter based on the number of connections to the application server. The adapter evaluates the total connections in use and creates threads in counts that will be most ideal for optimal processing of load through the adapter.

Multithreading allows the adapter to process multiple messages concurrently ensuring better performance.

Outbound Adapter Instance — The outbound adapter instance is used to publish the IDocs or send out RFC/BAPI requests. The outbound configuration can service multiple requests from SAP. It does not have to wait for a reply to a previous request to proceed with the next request. Transactional RFCs are sequenced by the underlying SAP library and are handled sequentially by the adapter.

Inbound Adapter Instance — On the inbound side the adapter can post multiple IDocs to SAP. The adapter instance can process multiple RFC requests for the same or different RFCs/BAPIs. The Inbound configuration can also service multiple requests from external systems for posting requests into SAP without waiting for a reply for the previous request. The adapter also handles simultaneous IDoc messages.

Replacing Control Fields

This feature is applicable to IDoc Publication service. It allows you to replace the value of the fields in the control record of an IDoc. For example, replacing values of the fields RCVPRN (receiving partner) or RCVPOR (receiving port), can be done within the adapter itself and no separate IDoc service is needed. This is typically done to control the IDoc routing in SAP by modifying the value of certain control externally through the adapter.


Advanced Features | 33

You have the flexibility to change the values of control record fields right in the adapter, - this does not require any external transformation.

Dynamic Subjects

This feature is applicable to IDoc Publication service for the standalone adapter. Subject for the IDoc publisher can be constructed based on content of the fields in the control record. This allows for content-based routing of messages based on the content.

Run-time dynamic construction of subjects, allows for content-based routing of messages.

Validation of Destinations

A list of valid partners (destinations) can be maintained in the adapter configuration. The adapter will only publish IDocs meant for these destinations and will write the IDocs for all other destinations, to a file.

You can avoid publishing IDocs, which are not relevant.

QRFC Support

This feature is used to perform sequencing of transactional RFCs.

In the SAP system, transactions can be processed as a queue. The sequence of the transaction in a queue can be defined separately, and each queue can be processed individually.

Dynamic Application Server Connection

This feature allows the Outbound adapter to dynamically connect to and service BAPIs/RFCs/IDocs from a cluster of SAP application servers under a central SAP instance.

The adapter dynamically discovers and connects to new application servers added to the environment and drops connections to other servers that have been removed from the cluster.

The ability to dynamically discover all active application servers and connect to them eliminates adapter downtimes, which usually happens when reconfiguring to connect to a newer set of application servers. The intelligence built into the adapter allows it to respond dynamically to changes in the SAP environment and ensures that the adapter caters to all relevant application servers.


| 35

Chapter 3 Adapter Infrastructure Tools

This chapter introduces the required and optional TIBCO infrastructure tools that work with an adapter.

Topics

• TIBCO Runtime Agent, page 36

• TIBCO Designer, page 37

• TIBCO Administrator, page 38

• TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks, page 41

• TIBCO Hawk, page 42

• TIBCO Business Studio, page 44

• TIBCO ActiveMatrix Administrator, page 49


36 | Adapter Infrastructure Tools

TIBCO Runtime Agent

The TIBCO Run-time Agent (TRA) provides basic connectivity between the adapter and other TIBCO infrastructure tools. The TRA is required on any machine on which an adapter is installed. The TRA runs on each machine on which an adapter runs and executes scripts, sends alerts, and performs recovery as specified.

The TRA has two main functions:

• Supplies an agent that runs in the background on each machine.

— The agent is responsible for starting and stopping processes that run on a machine according to the deployment information.

— The agent monitors the machine. That information is then visible via the TIBCO Administrator GUI.

• Supplies the run-time environment, that is, all shared libraries including third-party libraries required by the adapter.

TIBCO Domain Utility

The TRA contains the TIBCO Domain Utility, which is used to manage the components available on a TIBCO administration domain. The utility allows you to:

• Add or remove a machine to a TIBCO administration domain.

• Add or remove the TIBCO Enterprise Message Service server plug-in to a TIBCO administration domain.

• Change TIBCO Rendezvous parameters. Changing TIBCO Rendezvous parameters is an advanced option performed only by users familiar with TIBCO Rendezvous. If you perform this task, you must perform it on each machine in the TIBCO administration domain, then restart the TIBCO Administration Server.

• Change TIBCO administration domain credentials. Changing domain credentials is an advanced option. You must perform it on the machine where the TIBCO Administration Server is installed.

• Remove a secondary TIBCO Administration Server.

• Enable TIBCO administration domain and security management on a machine where TIBCO Administrator has been installed.

• Migrate previous TIBCO Administrator installations.


TIBCO Designer | 37

TIBCO Designer

TIBCO Designer provides the design-time environment for configuring a standalone adapter project. Using Designer, you create a project, add adapter services to it with a simple drag-and-drop interface, and specify the configuration information for each adapter service.

Before using TIBCO Designer, make sure you read the TIBCO Designer. The documentation can be accessed via the TIBCO Designer Help > Designer Help from the menu bar. The next diagram shows the TIBCO Designer interface.

The standalone adapter adds a palette to the TIBCO Designer environment which provides the adapter specific resources

Figure 15 TIBCO Designer main window

Design

Menu bar

Tool bar

Projectpanel

panelPalette

panel

Configuration

panel



TIBCO Administrator

TIBCO Administrator provides user, resource, and application management modules for adapters.

• User Management. This module allows you to set permissions for adapter users. You define authentication, users and groups, and assign access control lists to users. This includes security for server-based projects at design-time and for deployed applications at runtime.

• Resource Management. This module allows you to monitor machines and all running applications in a TIBCO administration domain. Alerts can be created, for example, to notify an administrator if the number of processes or disk usage exceed a certain number.

• Application Management. This module allows you to upload Enterprise Archive (EAR) files, and create, configure, and deploy adapters. This console is also used to start and stop adapters.

• Load balancing. An adapter can be served by a primary and secondary TIBCO Administration Server. The primary server allows read and write operations, while the secondary server supports read operations. Load balancing is implemented through the use of the TIBCO Rendezvous distributed queue protocol (RVDQ) and therefore not available for HTTP.

To get the load balancing benefit with HTTP, you must either use an IP redirector or explicitly point to a backup server to be used when a server fails. See your IP Redirector or HTTP Server documentation for information on how to do this.

• Failure recovery. You can use a load-balanced TIBCO Administration Server for failure recovery. In a completely trusted environment, you can instead use a database back-end for your server and use checkpoints in the database for failure recovery.

TIBCO Administration Domain

A TIBCO administration domain is installed only if you have also installed the User Management module.

A TIBCO administration domain is a collection of users, machines, and components that an administration server manages. There is only one Administration Server for each administration domain. Components within an administration domain can communicate with systems outside of the domain, but the domain is the administrative boundary of your enterprise integration project.


TIBCO Administrator | 39

Each TIBCO administration domain contains one or more machines. By default, all machines within an administration domain are expected to be in the same network subnet. You can, however, set up your system to use TIBCO Rendezvous rvrd and can then use the components across subnets. See the TIBCO Administrator Server Configuration Guide for details.

Each machine can belong to only one TIBCO administration domain. This is similar to a Microsoft Windows network domain where your machine can also belong to only one network domain.

TIBCO Administration Server

The TIBCO Administrator Server provides a central storage and distribution point for configuration data and schema data needed by an adapter. The server is included in both Administrator editions.

Each administration domain has one and only one TIBCO Administration Server. The TIBCO Administration Server is the machine process that handles the stored project and requests to manage the TIBCO administration domain.

The TIBCO Administrator Server contains its own web server (Apache Tomcat) that can be accessed via the TIBCO Administrator GUI for configuration and monitoring information.

The TIBCO Administration Server supports centralized authentication and authorization. Using the TIBCO Administrator GUI, users with full administrative privileges can define who has access to projects that are managed by the repository server.

TIBCO Administrator GUI

You can access the TIBCO Administration Server using the web-based TIBCO Administrator GUI. The GUI allows you to create users and assign access to projects managed by the Administration Server. You can invoke the GUI from any machine in a TIBCO administration domain. The next diagram shows the GUI.



Figure 16 TIBCO Administrator GUI


TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks | 41

TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks

TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks is a scalable, extensible, and easy to use integration platform that allows you to develop integration projects. TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks includes a graphical user interface for defining business processes and an engine that executes the process.

In TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks, adapter services are responsible for publishing or subscribing to business data in a decoupled yet reliable manner. The business process receives data from an adapter service and routes data to an adapter service.

TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks provides the following activities for use with adapters:

• Publish to Adapter—Publishes data from the process to an adapter, which subscribes to data coming from the process and passes the data to the target application.

• Adapter Subscriber—Subscribes to incoming data published by the adapter.

• Invoke an Adapter Request-Response Service—Communicates (as a client) with an adapter request-response service.

• Adapter Request-Response Server—Starts a process based on the receipt of a request from an adapter.

• Respond to Adapter Request—Sends a response to an adapter for a previously received request.

• Wait for Adapter Message—Waits for the receipt of a message from the publication service of the specified adapter.

• Wait for Adapter Request—Waits for the receipt of a request from a request-response invocation service.

See the TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks documentation for more information.

TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks Service Engine

The product provides an ActiveMatrix container to deploy ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks projects using TIBCO ActiveMatrix Administrator. TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks supports service oriented processing with the use of service resources, partners, and partner bindings.

See the TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks Service Engine documentation for more information.



TIBCO Hawk

TIBCO Hawk monitors and manages distributed applications and systems throughout the enterprise. System administrators can monitor application parameters, behavior, and loading activities for all nodes in a local or wide-area network and take action when pre-defined conditions occur. In many cases, run-time failures or slowdowns can be repaired automatically within seconds of their discovery, reducing unscheduled outages, and slowdowns of critical business systems.

TIBCO Hawk features include:

• Extensive monitoring capabilities at the operating system and application levels including process data, disk, and CPU utilization, network statistics, log, and system files

• Built-in routines within other TIBCO ActiveEnterprise components allow for proactive management. Problems to be found and fixed before failure can occur.

• Hawk Application Management Interface (AMI) routines can be embedded within custom adapters, allowing active management of those adapters by the Hawk micro-agent

• Distributed micro-agents support autonomous network behavior so local management and problem resolution can continue during an outage

• Fault-tolerance is achieved through the independent operation of Hawk agents, which continue to perform local tasks even in the event of network failure

TIBCO Hawk consists of several components: a console display, a central repository for storage of configuration objects, agents, and microagents whose monitoring duties are defined by the rule bases.

• Agents monitor local conditions and take action or publish alert information that appears in the TIBCO Hawk display.

• Microagents act as an interface to the managed objects and are invoked through their supported methods.

Adapter Microagents

Each adapter includes a standard and custom microagent. The microagents provide:

• Business level statistics—statistics that report the progress of the adapter as it interacts with the vendor application. For example, in a database adapter such


TIBCO Hawk | 43

statistics might indicate whether objects were successfully or unsuccessfully inserted, updated, or deleted in the database.

• Queries that return information about the state of the adapter. This can be an important tool for seeing the internals of an adapter and debugging it if something appears wrong. For example, methods can return information about threads, internal queues, or connections to the target system. Using these methods, one might be able to identify certain bottlenecks or gauge how successfully an adapter is scaling with respect to the current environment.

• Updates of the adapter runtime parameters. This includes retrieving the current runtime parameters and setting new runtime parameters without restarting the adapter. An example of this is getting and setting the polling interval. Updating a runtime parameter through the Hawk microagent only affects the setting of the instance that is running.



TIBCO Business Studio

The TIBCO ActiveMatrix development tools consist of TIBCO Business Studio and a set of ActiveMatrix plug-ins. For introductory information on TIBCO Business Studio, refer to the Workbench User Guide in the TIBCO Business Studio online help. To view the online help, select Help > Help Contents.

The screen contains the following area and views:

• Menu See Help > Help Contents > Workbench User Guide.

• Tool bar See Help > Help Contents > Workbench User Guide.

• Project Explorer Displays a tree containing all the project resources such as project folders, shared resource definition files, WSDL files, composite files, service assembly files, and so on.

• Editor Displays editors for the objects currently being edited. You switch between editors by clicking tabs at the top of the Editor area. The Composite Editor contains a canvas on which you can drop elements and a palette that organizes the elements that you can add to the composite. Other editors allow you to configure shared resources and service assemblies.

Editor

Notebook

MenuTool bar

ProjectExplorer

Outline


TIBCO Business Studio | 45

• Outline Provides a overview of the Composite Editor canvas. You can easily navigate from one part of a composite to another.

The Outline view also displays a content tree structure that contains the composite element inside the composite. In this view you can delete the contents of the composite. When you select a composite element in the Outline tree, the corresponding artifact in the composite becomes selected.

• Views Displays under the Editor Area. Contains the following views:

— Properties Displays property sheets for editing composites and composite elements. When you select a composite or composite element in the Composite Editor canvas, this view shows the properties of the selected object in a vertical tabbed notebook.

— Problems Displays validation and other errors.

— Registries Lists UDDI registries and the WSDL files returned from searching a registry.

You open a view by selecting Window > Show View > View.

ActiveMatrix Resource Wizard

The starting point for creating all types of ActiveMatrix projects and assets is the ActiveMatrix Resource Wizard. The resource wizard allows you to select wizards to create:

• Adapter service engine projects

• ActiveMatrix sample projects

• ActiveMatrix SOA projects

• Composites

• Mediation flows

• Service assemblies

Composite Element Editors

Composite elements are configured in property sheets accessed through the Properties view.

Figure 17 shows the an example of the Properties view.

Figure 17 Component Property Sheet


TIBCO Business Studio | 47

Debugger

The TIBCO Business Studio debugger provides a testing environment for stepping through composite elements and determining the sources of errors. Figure 18 on page 47 shows the debugger in the process of debugging a sample HelloWorld composite. Breakpoints have been set before and after the Java component executes, and the debugger is stopped at the before breakpoint. In the Variables view on the top-right, the value of the request is being examined.

Figure 18 Debugger



Service Assembly Editor

In order to be deployed, composites must be transformed into service units and service assemblies. Figure 19, shows a sample service assembly editor view.

Figure 19 Service Assembly Editor


TIBCO ActiveMatrix Administrator | 49

TIBCO ActiveMatrix Administrator

ActiveMatrix provides TIBCO ActiveMatrix Administrator for enterprise, environment, and service management. ActiveMatrix Administrator supports both graphical and command-line interfaces.

The following sections provide an overview of TIBCO ActiveMatrix Administrator. To get a quick introduction to the administration tools in practice, see TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Grid Getting Started. For detailed information about the administration tools, see TIBCO Hawk Administrator’s Guide.

TIBCO ActiveMatrix Administrator Architecture

Figure 20 on page 49 shows ActiveMatrix Administrator components, and the relationship between ActiveMatrix Administrator, other servers, and ActiveMatrix machines and nodes.

Figure 20 TIBCO ActiveMatrix Administration Architecture

AMA

Machine 1

AM Machine 2Authentication

Realm

AMA

Server 1

AMA

Graphical UI

Management

Daemon

Database

Management

Daemon

AM Node

AMA

Command-Line

Interface

AMA

Server 2

AM Machine 1

AM Node

Legend

AM

AMA

TIBCO ActiveMatrix

TIBCO ActiveMatrix Administrator

AMA Cient Machine

AMA

Machine 2

AMA Cluster

www



The TIBCO ActiveMatrix Administrator administration architecture consists of the following components:

• TIBCO ActiveMatrix Administrator Server Gathers management data from nodes, responds to requests from the ActiveMatrix Administrator graphical and command-line UIs, interacts with the authentication realm server to authenticate users, and interacts withTIBCO Management Daemon to manage nodes.

• TIBCO ActiveMatrix Administrator Cluster Groups one or more ActiveMatrix Administrator servers. ActiveMatrix Administrator servers within a cluster share a database and authentication realm and are kept synchronized.

• ActiveMatrix Database Stores ActiveMatrix administration data.

• Authentication Realm Manages user authentication data. The authentication realm can be provided either by TIBCO Administrator or by another server or a file.

• ActiveMatrix Administrator Graphical UI Displays the ActiveMatrix Administrator user interface. Figure 21 on page 50 shows the ActiveMatrix Administrator graphical UI welcome page. In ActiveMatrix Administrator, functionality is divided into perspectives. A perspective is a set of controls used to carry out a category of administration tasks.

• ActiveMatrix Administrator Command-Line Interface Provides a script-based interface to ActiveMatrix Administrator functions.

• Management Daemon Gathers installation information and exposes ActiveMatrix node life cycle operations.

Figure 21 TIBCO ActiveMatrix Administrator


TIBCO ActiveMatrix Administrator | 51

Enterprise and Environment Administration

You administer ActiveMatrix enterprises and environments, shared resource configurations, nodes, containers, and managed resources with ActiveMatrix Administrator graphical and command-line interfaces.

In the graphical interface, enterprise and environment administration is carried out in the Configure Enterprise Assets and Configure an Environment perspectives.

Service Administration

You administer ActiveMatrix services with ActiveMatrix Administrator graphical and command-line interfaces. Service administration consists of deployment tasks and monitoring and management tasks. In the graphical interface, these tasks are carried out in the Deploy to an Environment and Monitor & Manage perspectives.

Service Deployment

The first phase of service administration is deployment. During deployment, the service units within a service assembly are mapped and then deployed into their respective containers, the services provided by the service units are registered with the ActiveMatrix container, and the service endpoints are activated.

The choice of how to distribute services across nodes is determined by the desired level of service performance and availability. Service performance and availability can be enhanced if you deploy a service unit across multiple nodes, which allows Messaging Bus to distribute requests between the service instances.

Highly Available Services

Services deployed on multiple containers are highly available; if one container fails, service requests will be handled by one of the remaining containers. No configuration is required to make services highly available. Messaging Bus automatically routes to any available service instance identified in the message exchange.

Load Balanced Services

Requests to services deployed on multiple containers are load balanced between the available providers. No configuration is required to load balance between services. Messaging Bus uses a round robin algorithm for routing requests to service instances.



Service Monitoring and Management

TIBCO ActiveMatrix Administrator not only allows you to configure and deploy services, but also lets you monitor and manage the deployed services. Monitoring the system performance is not a one time activity but needs to be performed on a day-to-day basis. The Monitor & Manage perspective of TIBCO ActiveMatrix Administrator keeps track of system health without much overhead.

In the Monitor & Manage perspective you can monitor the overall health and performance of the grid infrastructure, applications, and services. You can monitor performance at various levels such as environment, machine, node, container, service assembly, and service unit.

The monitoring subsystem uses content-based metrics to measure the service performance, availability of services, service usage, and the number of successful to faulty service responses. These metrics provide real-time values by fetching data every minute and updating the values of the metrics. The real-time data is then displayed in a web-based dashboard provided with pre-defined views and visual alerts.


| 53

Appendix A SAP ERP System

This appendix gives an overview of the SAP ERP system and descriptions of the interfaces exposed by system.

Topics

• The SAP ERP System, page 54

• Exchanging Business Information, page 57


54 | SAP ERP System

The SAP ERP System

SAP ERP system is a general purpose, transaction-based business application system. Each transaction represents an individual business process — usually seen as a series of screens. Flexibility is achieved using modular business components, which can in turn be combined to develop new modules and transactions. SAP has a three-layer, client-server-based architecture, as shown in the figure. These layers are explained in sections that follow.

SAP GUI Presentation Server

The top layer is the graphic user interface (GUI). This layer consists of a hierarchy of query-response screens that allow company staff to access, review, and compare day-to-day and longer-term business information, and to control the business through applications that process business data. The SAP GUI graphically presents formatted business data retrieved from the application


The SAP ERP System | 55

server, handles the user dialog, and communicates user entries to the Application Server. Categories of business information include office administration, logistics, accounting, and others, as shown in one of the top-level SAP GUI screens, in the next figure:

The SAP GUI program accesses the business database server by means of the Application Server layer. Information on many business transactions can be displayed in a report such as the following:

The GUI also provides the interface to control communication of business information between two SAP systems, and between an SAP system and an external application, such as the TIBCO Adapter for SAP.

Application Server

The Application Server layer processes the business logic (ABAP/4 programs) relying on data stored in the database and on user input. The programs themselves are also stored in the database. The processes that make up an Application Server run on dedicated, powerful, servers.


56 | SAP ERP System

The Application Server provides many services to support the user interface layer. In this layer, programs are available to create, capture, configure, and process business data and to present it in a logical and easily assimilated display. Custom business applications written for the specific business entity augment standard SAP programs.

Database Server

The Database Server holds the relational database and maintains:

• application data, for example SAP records

• customization data, for example ALE customizing

• ABAP/4 business program logic

Each SAP system has one database and one Database Server. Any of the most widely-used SQL database management applications can be used, including Oracle and Informix.


Exchanging Business Information | 57

Exchanging Business Information

SAP provides many interfaces to extract and import data to facilitate enterprise-wide integration. The following interfaces are the standard means for exchanging business information between SAP and other business application systems.

Summary of SAP Interfaces

• ALE: Application Link Enabling.

This is SAP's middleware to integrate different SAP systems together to achieve cross-business functionality. ALE facilitates the event driven, asynchronous exchange of information directly out of business transactions or administrative transactions. It provides tools to customize a distribution model and monitoring and management tools.

• BAPI: The Business Objects Repository (BOR) Application Programming Interface.

This API of the SAP Business Framework offers business objects for object-oriented manipulation of business data. The business objects in BOR describe complete business processes. Each BOR object has one or more methods, and not all of its methods are exposed. The collection of all exposed methods of all BOR objects is called the Business API or BAPI.

• RFC: Remote Function Call.

This is the most popular SAP access technology. This provides the basis to access ALE/IDocs, BAPIs and BOR information. This interface allows non-SAP and SAP applications to execute SAP Advanced Business Application Programming (ABAP) functions that have been RFC-enabled. Non-SAP applications that use this interface behave as RFC client/server programs to SAP.

• EDI: Electronic Data Interchange of Intermediate Documents (EDI/IDoc).

This is the means for communicating business data to and from external partners. It is similar to ALE. EDI provides more customization capabilities, so that data can be communicated to and from specific business partners in a specific manner.

• IDocs: Intermediate Documents.

These are used to transfer data in a business transaction. IDocs encapsulate application data in segment hierarchies. They are used as data containers for both ALE and EDI. They are called intermediate documents because they were originally used with EDI, as SAP's common intermediate structure to


58 | SAP ERP System

bridge over multiple EDI standards. SAP IDoc data was then mapped to specific EDI standards later in the process. Communication IDocs are created from master IDocs for point-to-point distribution to individual recipients as per an ALE partner profile within ALE customization. There are several hundred IDoc types for application data. Both ALE and EDI have one common feature, once the specific processing is done, the data is automatically sent out of the corresponding operational or administrative transactions (exceptions exist for master data).

The adapter discussed in this document uses ALE/IDoc, RFC, and BAPI interfacing technology to achieve data interchange. Figure 14 shows how ALE serves as the IDoc interface between SAP systems and non-SAP systems.

Figure 22 SAP Adapter ALE/IDoc interface

SAP ApplicationMaster

IDocALE Outbound

Process Comm IDoc

TIBCO

ActiveMatrix

Adapter for SAP

Publisher

TIBCO

EnvironmentNon-SAP

Application

Comm IDoc

TIBCO

ActiveMatrix

Adapter for SAP

Subscriber

Master

IDocALE Outbound

Process

SAP Database

Inbound to SAP

Outbound to SAP


Exchanging Business Information | 59

IDoc Structure

The IDoc internal structure serves as a general-purpose communication vehicle to move different kinds of business data.

An example of an IDoc type is “ORDER01.” It is used to communicate data describing a purchase order, including purchase order number, buyer, payment terms, amount, etc. There are hundreds of types of predefined IDoc types and at a given site, many variations of the predefined types are used. As shown in the above figure, every type of IDoc has three parts:

• Control Record — The format of the Control Record is identical for all IDoc types. It contains many fields that specify control information, including message ID, the message time, SAP proxy system (logical system), and many others.

• 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 and can be recursive, which means that a segment can contain other segments.

• Status Record — The Status Record describes the processing stages that an IDoc can pass through, and has an identical format for each IDoc type. Status entries include error and status codes, and state of message processing such as “created”, “sent”, etc.

The control and data records are part of an IDoc instance. Status records however are exchanged separately and are not carried with Control and Data records in an IDoc instance. To determine the syntax of each IDoc type, SAP uses IDoc metadata. The metadata specifies the IDoc segments in a tree structure, with data field characteristics within segments, metadata version, and other information generic to the IDoc type. This metadata is extracted by the TIBCO Designer palette and saved to the project.

RFC/BAPI Structure

Remote Function Calls (RFCs) are implemented in request/reply communication. Business Application Programming Interfaces (BAPIs) are standard SAP business interfaces to BOR, and functionally are similar to RFCs. Schema files are extracted from the SAP system instance using the TIBCO Designer palette and saved to the project.


60 | SAP ERP System


| 61

Index

A

ActiveMatrix Administrator cluster 50

ActiveMatrix Administrator server 50

ActiveMatrix Database 50

ActiveMatrix resource wizard 45

Adapter

service engine 3

standalone 3

Adapter Infrastructure Tools

TIBCO ActiveMatrix Administrator 49

architecture 49

TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks 41

TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks Service

Engine 41

TIBCO Administrator 38

TIBCO Busindess Studio 44

TIBCO Designer 37

TIBCO Hawk 42

TIBCO Runtime Agent 36

Adapter Terms

.ear file 4

adapter container 4

business objects 4

Message Exchange Pattern (MEP) 4

palette 4

project 4

service assembly 4

SOA 4

WSDL 4

Advanced Features 30

ALE/IDoc Interface 10

API x

Application Link Enabling - Intermediate Documents

(ALE/IDoc) 28

Application Server 55

authentication realm 50

B

BAPI 28

BAPI Transactional Support 30

C

Certified Messaging, RVCM 26

composite element editors 45

Configuring a Remote Adapter 35

Configuring Dynamic Subjects 33

Configuring Valid Destinations 33

Customer Support xii

D

Data Chunking 31

Database Server 56

Distributed Queue, RVDQ 26

documents related viii

E

Event Driven Inbound Connection 31

Exchanging Business Information 57

H

highly available services 51


62 | Index

I

IDoc

structure 59

IDoc Filtering 30

IDoc Structure 59

imagesAdapt_arch.vsd 16

L

load balanced services 52

Logical Process Architecture 15

M

Multithreading 32

O

Overview 35

P

Product Overview 11

Publication Service 17

Publication Service typical flow diagram 18

R

related documents viii

Remote Function Call (RFC) 28

Replacing Control Fields 32

Request-Response Invocation Service 23

Request-Response Service 21

RFC Interface 10

RFC/BAPI Structure 59

RV xi

RVCM xi

RVDQ xi

S

SAP 54

application server 55

database server 56

SAP GUI Presentation Server 54

SAP Interface Overview 10

SAP Interfaces and TIBCO ActiveMatrix Adapter for

SAP 28

SAP Overview 10, 53

SAP server

GUI/Presentation Server 54

service administration 51

service and binding definition editor 45

service assembly deployment 51

service assembly editor 48

service deployment 51

service monitoring and management 52

Services Offered by the Adapter 17

Subscription Service 19

typical flow diagram 20

Summary of SAP R/3 Interfaces 57

Support for Multiple Application Servers 32

T

The SAP Business Application System 54

TIBCO ActiveMatrix Adapter for SAP

ALE IDoc interface 58

components 15

TIBCO Resource Wizard 45

TIDManager Service 13

TRA 36

Typical Publication Service Flow 18

Typical Request-Response Invocation Service Flow 24

Typical Request-Response Service Flow 21


Index | 63

Typical Subscription Service Flow 20


64 | Index

Tib Adsap Concepts

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