Is it possible to...

[Former Member]

Hello,

we are searching for a solution to connect a Mobile Landscape (like a Client / Server Architecture that is often moving) to a SAP System that isn't moving. In some cases the bandwith between the two systems is very small, so a complete SAP-System on the Mobile Landscape isn't the best solution for a small Sync-Behavior.

Is it a good approach to use the SAP Mobile Client 7.0 for a szenario where the Mobile Client acts like a Server to all Clients behind the Mobile Client? The system is only occasionally connected.

So it looks like this:

SAP AS JAVA / ABAP / MI - - - INTERNET - - - SAP MI CLIENT - - - SERVER (WHAT EVER) - - - LAN - - - MANY WORKSTATIONS

Maybe there be a better way to sync with the base SAP-Sys?

Thank you for your answers.

Best Regards

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Andre,

MI is usually not designed to handle a hughe amount of clients as such. There is no logging if you read a dataset in EDIT mode for example. This can cause several issues. Well, you can have multiple users on MI - but only one at a time. The design was build for Laptops or PDAs - to allow them to have the necessary dataset on the device while one user has access to this data.

In your case - good question - several ideas but all with hughe dev - and in my understanding MI is not the correct solution for you.

Regards,

Oliver

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thank you Oliver,

well my opinion was, that we use the MI Client only to connect to the SAP-Sync-System. Otherwise we have to develop a complete System that connects to the SAP. Thats not our target.

An Example:

A Salesstore (that is often moving) consists of 1 Server and 5 Clients (may Cash Boxes). At a normal work day the Clients sell some Products and want and order some new Products for their Stock. Maybe every evening after closing hour, one Employee doing the Sync with the SAP Sys-Backend in a fixed location. So the amount of data is small to be synchronised (e.g. some orders, sales and states).

The advantage of that approach is, to only connect one time a day to the SAP-Sys-Backend. All Data at the Stores Server will be hold twice, one in the MI-Client DB and one on the DB for the Cash Boxes. On Sync the Cash Box DB fist is syncronized with the MI-Client DB and then the Client synchronize with the SAP-Sys-Backend, after that, the MI-Client DB is synchronized with the Cash Box DB again. Thats what i thought about my first approach.

On the other hand, building a complete new Sys for conneting to the SAP-Sys-Backend is too much for us.

What you think about my example? Isn't it a quick approach?

Thank you in advance

Best regards.

André Wolter

Edited by: André Wolter on Mar 27, 2008 11:15 AM

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Andre,

ok, then it sounds possible, as long as you keep a few things in mind:

- have a syncBO with the master data (article, pricing,...) but only read from that BO on the client!

- have a sales BO where you enter the billing/sales you did

- have an order BO, where you can order something from the warehouse

SalesBo and OrderBO can only be changed by the person that created the object.

Then, withsync - it is more like a messaging system then really MI - but ... it should work. Do not take it for granted, I never tested several users at the same time logging in to MI - but it could work.

Oh, as I am writing this there comes a thing to my head that could really "kill" your idea: MI ist only accepting connections from LOCALHOST. There was a patch available for ME2.1 in the early days, that changed that. But I have no idea where to get it from at the moment - if it is available for the new release or so.

Well, thisis something I have to investigate a little deeper - will come back to this, but I think that it is not a good idea at the end. Cause with every new patch you will face this issue again I guess.

So we have two open toppics:

- is it possible to switch off the localhost check?

- is it possible to handle several users at the same time?

You could write a wrapper that handles the traffic between MI and the clients - but if you start with that - then I would go a totally other route. I think it is not that difficult to write an app that connects directly to R/3 with RFC and read master data changes and creates some orders and does some billing. The BADIs you have to write as well for MI - well, perhaps it is a better option to do it in another way.

Hope that helps anyway.

Regards,

Oliver

[Former Member]

It is not a good idea to use it for this example