New to SAP-JAVA

[Former Member]

Hi all

I'm new bee into this Java connectivity with SAP. I have good experience in developing J2EE applications and right now concentrating on using J2EE in SAP. I started learning ABAP and did not understand upto what level should I do expertise in it. I'm not sure whether learning ABAP would help me or not. Please advice me where to start and good self learning resources. I heard we can use ABAP in JSP pages. I'm totally confused for a good start.

~Sashi

[Former Member]

Sashi,

There are a gazillion things to learn and twice as many places to start from ...it all depends on what you are trying to do. What is your application ? Which version JDK ? What is your architecture ? What is your timeframe ? Which tools do you have available ? Which version of SAP will you use ? etc ... The reason why I ask is because I just started a java - sap application about two months ago and many of the answers to these questions helped guide me as to what I should tackle first.

However, this is a good forum to start in and the members have been very generous with their time in answering questions !

Have fun

Mark

[Former Member]

Mark,

Thanks for your suggestions. In fact I'm one of the Java developers and most of the times I work on enterprise applications development. Recently SUN conducted a tech shop where I learned about SAP-Java connectivity. I thought of extending my knowledge with in this area but trouble started immediately there after. I'm confused on a good start. Some one told me learning ABAP is no use when working with SAP using Java.

It seems you did your recent application with SAP, probably your experience would help me for a better start. What do you say?

Thanks in advance

Sashi

[Former Member]

Hi Sashi,

it's not necessary to know everything about ABAP to be able to write Java applications communicating with an ABAP system.

But in my opinion it's valuable to know at least the basics about Remote Function Calls (RFC), BAPIs, RFC destinations and debugging, since this is helpful if you have to check thinks in the ABAP backend (if a BAPI call via JCo fails due to missing parameters for example).

Hope that helps.

Regards

Stefan

[Former Member]

Sashi,

OK. Well our approach appears to be somewhat different than the general approach taken by the members of this forum in that we use WebSphere and WSAD to develop, not the environment preferred by SAP. In our architecture (BTW, we are religiously J2EE), we have chosen Java Server Faces for our front end and we use the JCA architecture to connect to SAP. We started with proof of concepts using JCA ( you can get the files from SAP web site ). In these proof of concepts we looked at how to manage transactions, simplicity of API, and performance. In transaction management, you can use different approaches: You can manually manage them with calls via JCA, or integrate them into the EJB framework - letting the container commit your calls. Just a note: Jco is currently the most widely used method of connecting java apps to SAP. We did not choose this approach for two reasons: It is not a J2EE API and it uses JNI.

We also looked at WebServices as way to connect to SAP, but we are not sure how to call different web services all inside the same transaction, so we will not go with this approach (we have no more time to investigate).

Also, another way of connecting to SAP is with XI. We were not accepted for ramp up for this product, so unfortunately we cannot look into this approach for our current project, but this approach appears to be one in which SAP will be investing much effort.

Hope this helps some !

Mark