SAP Experts: VMware Virtualization | Consulting | Integration - DataXstream
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SAP is announcing a new version of SAP Connector for Microsoft .NET 3.0 (now called “NCo 3.0″). A beta program for selected customers and partners is currently underway (Q3, 2010) with the general release of the software coming soon thereafter. I will highlight some of the major differences between the SAP Connector for Microsoft .NET 2.0 and NCo 3.0 (besides the obvious, and much-needed name-shortening).
EDITOR’S NOTE: NCo 3.0 has now been released. Read more details here.
This blog post describes how to use an SAP .Net Connector proxy, created in a VS 2003 project, in a Visual Studio 2008 C# solution.
[Editor's Note]
This blog is third in a multi-part series describing how to use the SAP .NET Connector:
- Introduction to the SAP .Net Connector
- Building an SAP .NET Connector Proxy
- Using the SAP .Net Connector in Visual Studio 2008
Our previous post described how to use Visual Studio 2003 and the SAP .Net Connector to create a Dynamic Link Library containing the desired SAP functionality. The DLL contains proxies for each SAP function that we want to utilize.
We will reference that DLL in a Visual Studio 2008, and use it to retrieve system information from an SAP host.
As a demonstration, we are creating the TLA System, which exists solely to demonstrate certain SAP .Net Connector programming techniques.
The SAP .Net Connector is an SAP-supplied control that works only with Visual Studio 2003. This blog post describes how to create a VS 2003 project that will allow you to use the SAP .Net Connector in later versions of Visual Studio.
[Editor's Note]
This blog is the second of a multi-part series describing how to use the SAP .NET Connector:
- Introduction to the SAP .Net Connector
- Building an SAP .NET Connector Proxy
- Using the SAP .Net Connector in Visual Studio 2008
We will use Visual Studio 2003 and create a Dynamic Link Library (DLL) that encapsulates the desired SAP .Net Connector functionality. We can use the DLL that we create in a Visual Studio 2008 project.
To illustrate the process, we will build up, over the course of several blog posts, a system that is capable of receiving an IDOC from an SAP host. This system will be known as the Three Letter Acronym system, or TLA.
Overview
DataXstream’s XstreamConnector provides a robust, high performance tool to receive SAP IDOCS. These IDOCs are then persisted to an SQL database that can be used for any other application
This article describes one of the SAP components used by the DataXstream XstreamConnector to facilitate this process.
[Editor's Note]
This blog is first of a multi-part series describing how to use the SAP .NET Connector:
- Introduction to the SAP .Net Connector
- Building an SAP .NET Connector Proxy
- Using the SAP .Net Connector in Visual Studio 2008
Introduction
The SAP .Net Connector is a software component supplied by SAP that makes it possible to communicate between an SAP host and a .Net program. Any .Net language can be used with the SAP .Net Connector.
Where to Find It
You can download the SAP .Net Connector from http://service.sap.com/connectors. You will have to provide your SAP Marketplace user ID and password.
What it Does
The SAP .Net Connector gives a .Net program access to an SAP host. The .Net program can logon to an SAP host and issue SAP Remote Function Calls. Parameters can be passed in to an RFC, and results data can be passed back to the .Net program.
A .Net program can also establish a connection to an SAP IDOC Gateway. The .Net program uses the SAP .Net Connector to send and receive IDOCs. There is full support for transactional integrity for IDOCS moving back and forth between the SAP host and the .Net program.
With this functionality, a Microsoft .Net program has all that it needs to query SAP metadata, call ABAP functions, or send and receive IDOCs.
What it Doesn’t Do
While the SAP .Net Connector takes care of most of the heavy lifting in communicating with an SAP host, there is still considerable work to be done before you can get something useful from it.
In particular, there is no functionality built-in to the SAP .Net Connector for parsing the various data fields from an IDOC. It is up to the receiving program to know what the format of the IDOC is, and how to extract the data from the IDOC.
One other issue to deal with is that the SAP .Net Connector is built for Visual Studio 2003. There is a work around that is easy to use that enables you to use the SAP .Net Connector with newer versions of Visual Studio. Next week we will demonstrate that work around.
