Open Catalog Interface: Inbound Section (SAP Library

Open Catalog Interface: Inbound Section

Use

The inbound section consists of information that is sent to the Enterprise Buyer application by the catalog application.

For each item selected in the catalog and sent to the Enterprise Buyer application, all mandatory fields have to be sent, along with the relevant optional fields.

The fields can be sent back to the purchasing application by either the GET or the POST method (because to the limitations of GET, POST is strongly recommended).

Note the following:

Fields should not contain leading spaces.
All numeric fields that allow fractional amounts must explicitly include the decimal point "." at the correct byte position.
Apart from the decimal point, numeric fields may not include commas or any other non-numeric characters.
As of Release 2.0, no distinction is made between a service master and a material master. Both will be stored as a product master.
As of Release 2.0 the inbound section can be sent back to the Enterprise Buyer system as follows:

As an HTML version (as in Release 1.0)
As an XML version

HTML version

The following graphic illustrates the data flow of the inbound section:

To handle multiple items selected in the catalog, each field name must be an array using the bracket subscript convention as per the C programming language. Subscripts must start at 1 (not zero). For example, the description of an item would be returned as a name such as "NEW_ITEM-DESCRIPTION [1]" (refer to the Example of a Catalog Interface).

Item	Name	Required/Optional	Details	Type Length
Description	NEW_ITEM-DESCRIPTION[n]	Required if the SAP product master number is not specified.	The description of the item to be ordered	CHAR - 40
Product master	NEW_ITEM-MATNR[n]	Required if the Description field is not specified.	The SAP product master number in the buyer system	CHAR - 18
Product group	NEW_ITEM-MATGROUP[n]	Optional	The SAP product group	CHAR - 10
Quantity	NEW_ITEM-QUANTITY[n]	Required	Quantity to add. There can be a maximum of 11 digits to the left of the decimal point, and there must be 3 digits to the right. If the quantity contains decimal places, there must be a decimal point, not a comma. Otherwise problems will occur.	CHAR - 15
Unit of measure	NEW_ITEM-UNIT[n]	Required if product master field is not filled	Unit of measure of the item. Must be the standard ISO code.	CHAR - 3
Price	NEW_ITEM-PRICE[n]	Optional	Price of the item in the catalog. There can be a maximum of 11 digits to the left of the decimal point, and there must be 3 digits to the right.	CHAR - 15
Price unit	NEW_ITEM-PRICEUNIT[n]	Optional	The number of units that must be purchased at the given price. This quantity defaults to one.	CHAR - 9
Currency	NEW_ITEM-CURRENCY[n]	Required if a price is returned, otherwise optional	Must be the ISO code for the currency.	CHAR - 5
Lead time	NEW_ITEM-LEADTIME[n]	Optional	Number of days from today until the product will be available. If not specified, no assumptions will be made about the lead time.	CHAR - 5
Vendor	NEW_ITEM-VENDOR[n]	Optional	If the product is purchased through a multi-supplier catalog, this field contains the business partner number in the buyer system.	CHAR - 10
Vendor product number	NEW_ITEM-VENDORMAT[n]	Optional	The vendor product part number of the product	CHAR - 22
Manufacturer's code	NEW_ITEM-MANUFACTCODE[n]	Optional	The manufacturer's code in the buyer system	CHAR - 10
Manufacturer's product number	NEW_ITEM-MANUFACTMAT[n]	Optional	The manufacturer's product part number of the product.	CHAR - 40
Contract number	NEW_ITEM-CONTRACT[n]	Optional	The number of the contract with the vendor.	CHAR - 10
Item of a contract	NEW_ITEM-CONTRACT_ITEM[n]	Optional	The number of an item within a contract with the vendor.	CHAR - 5
Service flag	NEW_ITEM-SERVICE[n]	Optional	A flag which indicates if the line refers to a service or to goods.	CHAR - 1
Quotation	NEW_ITEM-EXT_QUOTE_ID[n]	Optional	A reference to an external quotation ID. Example: The catalog is able to create a quotation in the selling system. This is a reference to this quotation.	CHAR - 35
Quotation item	NEW_ITEM-EXT_QUOTE_ITEM[n]	Optional	A reference to an external quotation item. Example: The catalog is able to create a quotation in the selling system. This is a reference to this quotation.	CHAR - 10
Product ID	NEW_ITEM-EXT_PRODUCT_ID[n]	Optional	Key to identify a product in the catalog	CHAR - 40
Description	NEW_ITEM-LONGTEXT_n:132[] (see Note below)	Optional	Description of a configuration, for example.	CHAR - No restriction
Attachment	NEW_ITEM_ATTACHMENT	Optional	The field contains a URL to an attachment. The buyer system (SAP Business Connector) connects to the URL. You could use this field to append a particular configuration as an XML file, for example.	CHAR - 255
Customer-specific field	NEW_ITEM-CUST_FIELD1[n]	Optional	Customer-specific field, which may be handled in a business add-in in the SAP Business-to-Business Procurement system	CHAR - 10
Customer-specific field	NEW_ITEM-CUST_FIELD2[n]	Optional	As above	CHAR - 10
Customer-specific field	NEW_ITEM-CUST_FIELD3[n]	Optional	As above	CHAR - 10
Customer-specific field	NEW_ITEM-CUST_FIELD4[n]	Optional	As above	CHAR - 20
Customer-specific field	NEW_ITEM-CUST_FIELD5[n]	Optional	As above	CHAR - 50

The field NEW_ITEM-LONGTEXT forms an exception. In this case, the index must be attached with an underscore followed by 132 and empty brackets: NEW_ITEM-LONGTEXT_n:132[] (see also the Example of a Catalog Interface).

The functions DETAIL and VALIDATE will only work if the parameter NEW_ITEM_EXT_PRODUCT_ID[n] was filled from the catalog in a previous call.

The index of the line items is shown as 'n' in the table above.

The content of the five customer fields can be handled using business add-in BBP_CATALOG_TRANSFER. For further documentation on how to develop business add-ins, see:

Implementation Guide (IMG): Enterprise Buyer professional edition ® Business Add-Ins for Enterprise Buyer ® Copy Shopping Cart from Catalog in Enterprise Buyer

XML Version

With Release 2.0 the interface is also able to process XML as input. The prerequisite for this is that you install the SAP Business Connector on the receiving side, which is used as a mapping tool.

The following graphic illustrates the data flow of the inbound interface:

If XML is used, the XML file has to be passed over to the browser in an HTML form in an input field with the name ~xmlDocument. (This should have the type hidden .) The content of the generated XML file is expected to be bound to the input field ~xmlDocument as a base64-encoded string (see the Example of a Catalog Interface). The encoding can be done directly on the server side, or, as in the example, on the client side.

In addition the type of XML to be transferred has to be passed over in another input field. The name of this field is ~xmlType. This variable is used to distinguish between several XML schemas on the SAP Business Connector. Possible values for this field are: ESAPO (Encoded SAP Object) and ERNO (Encoded RosettaNet Object). To see the SAP XML schema, refer to the file pdi_oci.xsd at http://www.sap.com/csp/scenarios SAP B2B Procurement B2B-OCI.

Additional Catalog Functions

The table below shows what data is expected to be returned to the catalog if one of the additional functions is called:

	Function	Data To Be Returned From The Catalog
Detail of a product	DETAIL	No data has to be returned from the catalog. The detail view of the product has to be shown in the browser.
Validation of a product	VALIDATE	The application expects the complete product data to be returned. If the product no longer exists, the catalog is not expected to return any data. Data transfer must be done in the background.
Sourcing of a product	VALIDATE	The catalog is expected to transfer the data in the normal way.