Structure of the business object for SAP

A WebSphere business object for SAP represents each IDoc as a parent wrapper business object that contains two child business objects: a control record business object and a data record business object. The control record business object contains the metadata required by the connector to process the business object. The data record business object contains the actual business object data to be processed by the SAP application, and the metadata required for the connector to convert it to an IDoc structure for the RFC call.

The adapter includes a business object definition for the control record. The definition file, BO_SAPIDocControl.txt, is located in the \repository\SAP directory. The ALE Module uses the same business object definition for 3.X and 4.X versions of SAP.

The TABNAM attribute in the control record business object indicates which SAP function module the parent wrapper business object calls:

In addition, the following attributes must have values for SAP to properly process the object in ALE. These values are based on your ALE configuration:

The DOCNUM attribute in both business objects establishes the relationship between the data record business object and the control record business object.

When processing service call requests, the ALE Module can handle multiple IDocs in a single business object. Before it can do so, however, you must add another multiple-IDoc wrapper business object around two or more parent wrapper business objects. This top-level multiple IDoc wrapper business object contains an attribute that represents an array of parent wrapper business objects. For more information, see Parent wrapper business object.

The adapter includes a business object generation tool, SAPODA. This tool uses an IDoc definition text file to generate business object definitions for the ALE Module. For more information on developing business objects for the ALE Module, see Developing business objects for the ALE module and Appendix D, Generating business object definitions using SAPODA.

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