Very basic question - why use BAPI

[Former Member]

Hi All.

I am a newbie in WD4A. I noticed that since Wd4A is in ABAP stack itself, and that we could call normal FM in it.

Does that mean there is no RFC communication when data is sent from user screen to backend?

If there is no RFC comm, why at all are we still asked to write BAPI's to communicate?

Any performance reasons/

Thanks again for your time and patience.

[Former Member]

Thanks everyone. Points awarded!

Message was edited by:

Aishi Sharma

[Former Member]

Hi Ashi,

many times situation demands that you need to take data from another R / 3 systems to fill it in Context node.

I mean to say just take you want to show matnr in search help but your r /3 is not having it .So you will fetach it from another r /3 .Just take case from PB1.

Then you need to call RFC i.e. BAPI for featching that material .

then on some event you will write this ABAP code.

CALL FUNCTION 'BAPI_MATNR'

DESTINATION 'PB1CLNT800'

TABLES

IT_MATNR = IT_MATNR.

Ulitmately , you need BAPI in WD ABAP in case when you want populate data from another r / 3 server .

Hope I have cleared your doubt .If yes then Reward points.

Parag

[Former Member]

Hi Aishi,

question doesnt make sense to me...

<i>If there is no RFC comm, why at all are we still asked to write BAPI's to communicate?</i>

If you meant "call BAPIs" and not write BAPIs then

calling BAPIs is better from long term support view.

See the released flag on ordinary Function attributes.

This flag is often not set. Yet people call these functions anyway.

There is some chance such a function is changed in a patch or in the next release.

A BAPI is supported for 2 release cycles.

If there is no BAPI but a nice function, you have little choice but to call the function.

Functions that are widely used (cross development areas) rarely change.

But the residual risk, it could be changed remains.

regards

phil

[norbertk]

Hi Aishi,

there is no RFC-communication, except you would call an RFM from another system.

BAPIs are RFC-enabled function modules that represent some business logic and that are guaranteed to be stable over releases, that's why it's recommended to use them.

Regards,

Norbert