Axel Angeli Ulrich Streit Robi Gonfalonieri The SAP R/3® Guide to EDI and Interfaces The Efficiency of Theorem Provine Stratecle• by David A. Plaisted and Yunshan Zhu Recovery In Parallel Database Systems by Svein-Olaf Hvasshovd Applied Pattem Recopltlon by Dietrich W. R. Paulus and Joachim Homegger Efficient Software Dewlopment with DB2 for OS/390 by Jtirgen Glag Corporate Information with SA.,--EIS by Bernd-Ulrich Kaiser SAp8 R/38 lnterfaclnc uslnc lAPis by Gerd Moser Multlobjectlw Heuristic Search by Pallab Dasgupta, P. P. Chakrabarti and S.C. DeSarkar lntelllpnt Media Apnts by Hartmut Wittig Scalable Search In Computer Chen by Ernst A Heinz The SAP R/38 Guide to EDI and Interfaces by Axel Angeli, Ulrich Streit and Robi Gonfalonieri AxeoAngeli Ulrich Streit Robi Gonfalonieri The SAP R/3® Guide to EDI and Interfaces Cut your Implementation Cost with IDocs®, ALE® and SapScript® I I v1eweg GABLER Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP-Cataloguing-in-Publication-Data A catalogue record for this publication is available from Die Deutsche Bibliothek (http:jjwww.ddb.de). SAP®, R/2®, R/3®, IDoc®, ALE®, SapScript® are registered trademarks of SAP Aktiengesellschaft, Systems, Applications and Products in Data Processing, Neurottstrasse 16, 69190 Walldorf, Germany. The publisher gratefully acknowledges SAP's kind permission to use its trademark in this publication. SAP AG is not the publisher of this book and is not responsible for it under any aspect of press law. 1s t Edition 2000 All rights reserved © Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden 2000 Urspriinglich erschienen bei Friedr. Vieweg & Sohn Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Braunschweig/Wiesbaden 2000 Softcover reprint of the hardcover lst edition 2000 No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise without prior permission of the copyright holder. ISBN 978-3-663-01093-7 ISBN 978-3-663-01091-3 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-663-01091-3 - v About The Author Axel Angeli, is born in 1961. He is a Top Level SAP R/3 consultant and R/3 cross-application development coach. He specializes in coaching of large multi-national. multi language development teams and troubleshooting development projects. His job description is also known as computer logistics, a delicate discipline that methodically wakes the synergetic effects in team to accelerate and mediate IT projects. He is a learned Cybernetics scientist (also known as Artificial Intelligence) in the tradition of the Marvin Minsky (The society of mindJ and Synergetics group of Herman Haken and Maria Krell. His competence in computer science is based on the works of Donald Knuth [The Art of Computer Programming], Niklas Wirth (the creator of the PASCAL language), the object oriented approach as described and developed during the XEROX PARC project (where the mouse and windows style GUis have been invented in the early 1970ies) and Borland languages. Before his life as SAP consultant, he made a living as a computer scientist for medical biometry and specialist for high precision industry robots. He concentrates now on big international projects. He speaks fluently several popular languages including German, English, French and Slavic. g [email protected] Robi Gonfalonieri, born in 1964 is a senior ABAP IV developer and R/3 consultant for SO and MM. He is a learned economist turned ABAP IV developer. He specializes in international, multi-language projects both as developer and SO consultant. He speaks fluently several languages including German, French, English and Italian. e [email protected] Ulrich Streit, born in 1974 is ABAP IV developer and interface specialist. He developed a serious of legacy system interfaces and interface monitors for several clients of the process industry. g [email protected] logosworld.com is a group of loosely related freelance R/3 consultants and consulting companies. Current members of the logosworld.com bond are the following fine companies: • Logos! lnformatik GmbH, Bruhl. Germany: R/3 technical troubleshooting • OSCo GmbH, Mannheim, Germany: SAP R/3 implementation partner • UNILAN Corp., Texas: ORACLE implementation competence For true international R/3 competence and enthusiastic consultants, email us [email protected] (jj or visit http://idocs.de - vi For Doris. Paul, Mini - vii Danke, Thank You, Grac;ias, Tack sa mycket, Merci, Bedankt, Grazie, Danjawad, NandriJ_S e-Se I due special thanks to a variety of people, clients. partners and friends. Their insistence in finding a solution and their way to ask the right questions made this book only possible. I want especially honour Francis Bettendorf. who has been exactly that genre of knowledgeable and experienced IT professionals I had in mind, when writing this book. A man who understands an algorithm when he sees it and without being too proud to ask precise and well-prepared questions. He used to see me every day with the same phrase on the lips: "Every day one question." He heavily influenced my writing style, when I tried to write down the answers to his questions. He also often gave the pulse to write down the answers at all. At the age of 52, he joyfully left work the evening of Tuesday the 23rd March 1999 after I had another fruitful discussion with him. He entered immortality the following Wednesday morning. We will all keep his memory in our heart. Thanks to Detlefa nd lngmar Streit for doing the great cartoons. Thanks also to Pete Kellogg of UNILAN Corp., Texas, Juergen Olbricht. Wolfgang Seehaus and his team of OSCo, Mannheim for continuously forming such perfect project teams. It is joy working with them. Plans are fundamentally ineffective because the "circumstances of our actions are never fully anticipated and are continuously changing around us~ Suchman does not deny the existence or use ofp lans but implies that deciding what to do next in the pursuit of some goal is a far more dynamic and context-dependent activity than the traditional notion ofp lanning might suggest. Wendy Suchman, Xerox PARC http:// innovate. bt. comlshowcase/wearablesl - ix Who Would Read This Book? This book was written for the experienced R/3 consultants, who wants to know more about interface programming and data migration. It is mainly a compilation of scripts and answers who arose during my daily work as an R/3 coach. Quid - What is that The R/3 Guide is a Frequently Given Answers book. It is a book about? collection of answers. I have given to questions regarding EDI over and over again, both from developers, consultants and client's technical staff. It is focussed on the technical aspect of SAP R/3 IDoc technology. It is not a tutorial, but a supplement to the R/3 documentation and training courses. Quis - Who should The R/3 Guide has been written with the experienced read the book? consultant or ABAP developer in mind. It does not expect any special knowledge about EDI. however. you should be familiar with ABAP IV and the R/3 repository. Quo modo - how Well, this book is a "How to" book, or a "Know-how"-book. The do you benefit from R/3 Guide has its value as a compendium. It is not a novel to the book? read at a stretch but a book, where you search the answer when you have a question. Quo (Ubi) - Where You would most likely use the book when being in a project would you use the involved in data interfaces, not necessarily a clean EDI project. book? IDocs are also helpful in data migration. Quando-when The R/3 Guide is not a tutorial. You should be familiar with the should you read the general concept of ID ocs and it is meant to be used after you book have attended an R/3 course on IDocs, ALE or similar. Instead of attending the course you may alternatively read one of the R/31Doc tutorial on the market. Cur -Why should Because you always wanted to know the technical aspects of you read the book IDoc development, which you cannot find in any of the publicly accessible R/3 documentation. - xi Contents Table Of Contents Where Has the Money Gone? 1 1.1 Communication ............................................................................................... 2 More than 80% of the time of an ED/ project is lost in waiting for answers, trying to understand proposals and retrieving data nobody actually needs. 2 1.2 Psychology of Communication ...................................................................... 3 Bringing developers together accelerates every project. Especially when both parties are so much dependent on each other as in an ED/ project, the partners need to communicate without pause. 3 1.3 Phantom SAP Standards and a Calculation .................................................. 4 It is reported that SAP R/3 delivers standard ED/ programs and that they should not be manipulated under no circumstances. Because this is not true, much project is lost in chasing the phantom. 4 1.4 Strategy ............................................................................................................ 5 Do not loose your time in plans. Have prototypes developed and take them as a basis. 5 1.5 Who Is on Duty? ............................................................................................... 5 Writing interface programs is much like translating languages. The same rule apply. 5 1.6 Marcus T. Cicero .............................................................................................. 6 Some may have learned it in school: the basic rules of rhetoric according to Cicero. You will know the answers, when your program is at its end. Why don't you ask the questions in the beginning? Ask the right question, then you will know. 6 What Are SAP R/3 /Docs? 7 2.1 What are I Docs? .............................................................................................. 8 /Docs are structured ASCII files (or a virtual equivalent). They are the file format used by SAP R/3 to exchange data with foreign systems. 8 2.2 Exploring a Typical Scenario .......................................................................... 9 The /Doc process is a straight forward communication scenario. A communication is requested, then data is retrieved, wrapped and sent to the destination in a predefined format and envelope. 9 Get a Feeling for /Docs 11 3.1 Get A Feeling For IDocs ................................................................................ 12 For the beginning we want to give you a feeling of what /Docs are and how they may look like, when you receive it as a plain text file. 12 3.2 The IDoc Control Record ............................................................................... 14 The very first record of an /Doc package is always a coonqtr ol record. The structure of this control record is the ODic structure lED I and describes the contents of the data contained in the package. 14 3.3 The IDoc Data ................................................................................................ 15 All records in the /Doc, which come after the control record are the /Doc data. They are all structured alike, with a segment information part and a data part which is 1000 characters in length, filling the rest of the line. 15