Overview of Remote Communications (SAP Library

Overview of Remote Communications

This document is a programmer’s guide to remote communications that involve SAP Systems. The types of remote communications which are covered include:

communications between two independent SAP Systems

client-server communications between an external client and an SAP System acting as the server

client-server communications between an SAP System acting as the client and an external server.

A major part of this document contains material which is applicable to all the SAP-supported platforms. These are the sections dealing directly with the Remote Function Call (RFC). RFC is SAP’s platform-independent core technology for all the three types of remote communications mentioned above.

To understand the basics of RFC, you can read the section on RFC Programming in ABAP. Although it mainly deals with SAP-to-SAP communication, it also contains useful information for the programmer of external systems who uses an RFC API.

For Windows frontends, SAP provides interfaces based on Microsoft’s Object Linking and Embedding technology (OLE Automation).

Interfaces Used

Communications between SAP Systems or between SAP Systems and external systems use different types of interfaces.

ABAP Interfaces

This section describes the Remote Function Call interfaces provided for communication between SAP Systems and with external partners. It also contains a lot of useful information for the programmer of external systems who uses an RFC API.

External Interfaces

This section describes the communications interfaces provided for integrating external applications and SAP Systems.

If one of the communications partners does not support RFC, you must use the underlying CPI-C interfaces. For more information on CPI-C programming, see CPI-C Programmer's Guide