The ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) Adapter is the interface between the CRM (Customer Relationship Management) Middleware and external systems that cannot supply any BDocs (business documents) to the CRM Middleware.

Instead, these external systems can supply the CRM Middleware with ASCII files, which are converted into database tables by using the ASCII Adapter.

Similarly, information from the CRM System can be supplied in text files to the external systems.

• the BDoc´ Generator
• the BDoc Structure Mapper

During data import, the ASCII Adapter takes ASCII files (text files) from a predefined input directory, and converts them into temporary files in the consolidated database (CDB).

By calling up the ASCII Adapters, you can initiate a flow that calls up the BDoc´ Generator for External Data once the data is available in the CDB. The BDoc´ Generator takes the data, and converts it into BDocs´ (provisional business documents) on the basis of predefined rules.

The BDoc Structure Mapper can then convert the provisional business documents (BDocs´) into BDocs (business documents) by means of mapping rules. These BDocs can then be passed on to the standard flow.