R/3 to AS/400 Interface Design Advice

[Former Member]

Hi,

I need some design adivice on a Synchronous Interface involving R/3 and and an AS/400 system.The requirement is as follows,

The shipping Company uses AS/400 systems,Goods to be shipped are scanned at thier end using hand held scanners,Once a box is scanned for shipment , a message from the scanner containing Order Info and Line Item details needs to be sent to an R/3 table to update and then an acknowledgement needs to be sent to the AS/400 system,The frequency of these messages could be around 20 per minute, I am not very aware how things work on the AS/400 system,but know that currently they use a ODBC link.

Could I use XI as a middleware for this kind of interface, If yes how would i connect to the AS/400 system(which is inside our Landscape) and would XI handle and process 20 messages (around 50Kb each) per minute.would this work as if it were a direct connection..to R/3..?

I was thinking of using RFC's however wanted to know any better options .Any suggestions on this would be greatly appreciated...! Knidly let me know if you ned any more info... Thanks a ton..!!

[santhosh_kumarv · Accepted solution]

Hi,

>>Could I use XI as a middleware for this kind of interface,

Yes. From AS/400 systems data can be extracted in a flat file format. So you should design a File --> RFC --> File scenario.

>>If yes how would i connect to the AS/400 system

Connection to the AS/400 will be an FTP connection to AS/400 IFS (Integrated File System) folder.

>>would XI handle and process 20 messages (around 50Kb each) per minute

It can handle very much without any performance issue.

>>I was thinking of using RFC's however wanted to know any better options

For R3 system you could either use RFC or PROXY for synchronous scenario. Using Proxy will improve the performance.

Thanks,

SaNv...

[former_member206760]

veera,

i suggest that you use a

JDBC -> RFC ->JDBC scenario .. u will have to use a BPM for this...as JDBC cannot accept responses

1. Receive step -> receive say 10 records...also change there status to Intermediate so that they are not picked again

2. Sync send -> to send the req to RFC and get the response back

3. transformation step -> here you can do manipulations in the response that came from step 2 and then create a target DB structure .

4. async send ...to send the response to DB

[JoelTrinidade]

Hi Veeranjaneyulu.P,

For integration of AS/400 and R/3 the best way of doing is by use of RPC messages - XI-RFC only a little more effort would have to be done . The plus point is you can handle data load better and somewhere long back i read somewhere that its a recommended solution to .

Also since you have mentioned of the as is usage of ODBC link even if you go with jdbc that would not be a problem it would save on effort. Options of doing it by flat file are also available but then not only throughput efficiency needs to taken into account but also the processing speed is important so i suggest RPC messages and rfc.

Regards

joel

Edited by: joel trinidade on Mar 17, 2009 5:51 PM

[former_member181962]

At a high level, it looks like we have to go for a

JDBC-XI-Proxy scenario for your interface.

As/400 databases system send the data to the XI system which send the data to SAP system via a Inbound Proxy(Synchronous)

Here are some links for JDBC :

Regards,

Ravu