Adapter architecture

The WebSphere® Adapter for SAP Software connects to SAP systems running on SAP’s web application servers, using the SAP Java™ interface known as SAP Java Connector (SAP JCo). It does so by making calls, modeled as business objects, to the SAP native interfaces and passing data to and from the SAP system. The adapter supports SAP integration interfaces such as Business Application Programming Interface (BAPI) and Application Link Enabling (ALE), as well as RFC-enabled function modules.

The adapter supports outbound processing (from the adapter to the SAP system) and inbound processing (from the SAP system to the adapter) of events.

Outbound event processing

Outbound support allows a client to make calls to the adapter to perform a specific operation in the SAP system. The client requests a connection, which in turn is passed from the adapter to SAP.

Outbound event processing, which the adapter supports for the BAPI and ALE interfaces, consists of the following steps:
  1. A Service Component Architecture (SCA) component invokes an interaction with SAP.
  2. As a result of the invoked interaction, a business object representing the SAP function call is passed from the component application to the adapter.
  3. The adapter extracts the elements from the business object and, using the metadata information from the business object, recognizes the SAP interface to use (BAPI or ALE).
  4. Using the SAP Java interface (SAP JCo), the adapter converts the business object data to the appropriate SAP function call.
  5. The adapter then executes the function on the destination SAP software system, sending the event data to SAP.

Inbound event processing

Inbound event processing, which the adapter supports for the ALE interface, consists of the following steps:
  1. The adapter spawns listener threads to the SAP system.
  2. Whenever an event occurs in SAP, the event is pushed to the adapter via the event listeners.
  3. The adapter then forwards the event to the endpoint (a message driven bean).
  4. The endpoint registers the incoming event.
  5. The adapter can track and recover events in case of abrupt termination using the data source for persisting the event state in an event recovery table.

The adapter supports container managed sign-on and basic authentication. It does not support re-authentication.

The following diagram illustrates how the adapter communicates with the SAP system for inbound and outbound processing.

This image is described in the surrounding text.

Adapter processing flow


Terms of use |

Last updated: Sun Mar 12 11:15:15 2006

(c) Copyright IBM Corporation 2005.
This information center is powered by Eclipse technology (http://www.eclipse.org)