A BDC Sample with Visual Studio connecting SAP using ERPConnect Services Runtime

This sample is a Visual Studio 2012 solution that creates a BDC / BCS model (external content type) in SharePoint connected to SAP using ERPConnect Services Runtime (ECS).

Activating Datasources in the SAP OLTP System

To be able to extract OLTP Datasources from SAP ERP, you first of all have to activate the relevant DataSources in the SAP OLTP system. After activating the DataSources you can extract data from all the active DataSources using the DeltaQ component.

Thoses steps have to be carried out in the SAP ERP system (OLTP). No SAP BW system is required.

How to use an SQL Configuration Table with Xtract IS

SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) provides package configurations that you can use to update the values of properties at run time.

In this blog I will show how to store your package configuration in an SQL table. In my sample I will use Xtract IS to load the SAP table T001 for company codes using a where statement. The goal is to use the SQL configuration table to update the value of the where statement and the value of the SAP connection string.

How to schedule Xtract Universal extractions to load data from SAP

Xtract Universal supports integration of your SAP data in the most different target systems. After creating an extraction (Refer to the online help), you can run an extraction by just calling the correspondent URL that can be found in the Run Dialog (e.g. http://nbelzein:8065/?name=plants)

 

In this blog I will show you how to schedule the run of the Xtract Universal extractions that is as easy as calling a URL. Xtract Universal delivers the command tool XtractUniversalCmd.exe (to be found in the installation folder, e.g. C:\Program Files\XtractUniversal) to run an extraction using the cmd. We will use this approach to schedule an extraction with the windows Task Scheduler and the SQL Server Agent.

How to: Load data into a BW InfoObject with Xtract BW Loader

Xtract BW Loader is one out of the nine components of Xtract IS,  the SAP Connector for the SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) by Theobald Software.

BW Loader allows to load data to SAP BW objects using an InfoPackage (refer to SAP help to know more about InfoPackages).

In this blog I will show you how to use BW Loader in conjunction with an Infopackage to load data into  InfoObject Texts. You can use BW Loader in conjunction with other Infopackages too, to load data to other BW objects, like InfoObject attributes, hierarchies or InfoCubes.

How to open SAP GUI from browser

In this blog I will show how to launch SAP GUI from IE Browser using Javascript.

In Javascript we will use an ActiveXObject (wscript.shell) to call SAPshortcut.exe with the required parameters to open the SAP GUI.

The result should be as the following:

ERPConnect Services Video Tutorials

ERPConnect Services - Seamless connection of SAP and SharePoint 2010 ERPConnect Services (ECS) consists of two components, which allow you the complete range of data integration between SharePoint and SAP. No additional middleware is required – the integration runs completely within your SharePoint architecture.

• · ERPConnect Services Runtime (ECS Runtime) for interface programming with .NET
• · BCS Connector for connecting SharePoint lists with SAP objects or tables.