Need some information concerning connector for SAP

Question

Hello,

I'm currently doing some investigation concerning the relation between our .NET solution and a SAP system.
SAP can provide us acces to the RFC's, that's all I know for now. XI is not an option at this point.
Because I don't have that much experience with the technical design of this, I need some expertise.

I read that there is a .NET SAP connector that you can use together with SAP RFC protocol (librfc32.dll).
This is somehing from SAP and you need access to an SAP login to access these files? This is free?

Then I read something about the BizTalk WCF Adapter pack. This provides WCF model based communication with SAP.
I saw some examples and thi looks really interesting. But I see that this is evaluational software? Where can I get the pricing of this?

Basically what we need to do is send and request IDOCs from SAP. This needs to go via TRFC.

What do you think is the best way to go for this?

Regards,
Sven

Answer 1

Hi Sven,

Microsoft BizTalk Server - Pricing and Licensing: http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/en/us/pricing-licensing.aspx

BizTalk Adapter Pack is a set of adapters based on the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) programming model. The BizTalk Adapter Pack provides a single solution to easily and securely connect to Line-of-Business (LOB) data from any custom-developed .NET application, SQL Server–based business intelligence solution, or Office Business Application (OBA).

• Includes adapters for: SAP, Siebel, Oracle Database

• Includes ADO.NET providers for: SAP, Siebel

Biztalk Adapter pack is included in all BizTalk Editions except for the BizTalk Server 2009 Branch Edition
see: http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/en/us/adapter-pack.aspx

I worked in the past with SAP adapter, I don´t found any problems :)

I think is a good way to implement your needs and using SAP adapter you have some advantage:

• Generation of BizTalk Schemas from IDoc Types within a SAP System
• The transmitter sends IDocs, BAPIs, and RFCs to the appropriate SAP system via the .NET Connector. If the SAP system is not available, the transmission can be retried, or sent to a suspend queue, depending on user configuration.
• Exception handling: The adapter provides full transactional support between SAP and BizTalk Server. If there is a failure in receiving or sending, the transaction is rolled back.

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Sandro Pereira - http://sandroasp.spaces.live.com/blog/ http://www.devscope.net/WhatWeDo/Integration/tabid/107/Default.aspx

Answer 2

I think that the Biztalk adapters are quite expensive..
Or can I just use the adapters without Biztalk server? Guess not, right?
To be honest I have never worked with BizTalk server on it's own. So I don't have a clue how to practically use it.
Don't think it is needed in this scenario.

I looked at the examples of the biztalk adapter and those looked very easy. Problem is that you probably need to buy the license of the biztalk server to use the adapters?

You say: I worked in the past with SAP adapter, I don´t found any problems :)
Is this about the plain vanilla SAP .NET connector?

Answer 3

Hi,

You cannot use BizTalk adapter without BizTalk Server.
And yes, BizTalk Server is a little expensive, but BizTalk is not only a platform to communicate with SAP, is much much more (but I’m not a seller:) ).

I work in the past with transform Edi to IDoc and send this to SAP using BizTalk SAP Adapter, I work perfectly.
Is very easy to use SAP Adapter, but you needed to know some bases to work with BizTalk Server.

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Sandro Pereira - http://sandroasp.spaces.live.com/blog/ http://www.devscope.net/WhatWeDo/Integration/tabid/107/Default.aspx

Answer 4

Ok
I think I'm first going to work with the regular SAP .NET connector and see how it goes.
Thanks for the info