Enterprise Content Management Integration (ECMI)

Enterprise Content Management Integration (ECMI) delivers technologies for providing and managing content and documentation to support business processes in companies, independently of a particular document repository.

You can use the ECM Infrastructure to make content from ECM systems available to SAP applications, either using the ECM Store, the document repository provided by SAP, or a third-party document management system that you can access using the ECM integration layer. ECMI provides a standard shell and a standard file manager, the ECM Explorer.

To be able to use the ECM infrastructure, you must make the described settings in the SAP system and provide the repositories.

Applications use the ECMI interfaces to access their own repositories or the ECM Store delivered as standard. They can read and edit directories, documents, and the associated metadata.

ECMI contains:

• The ECM Store

• The CMIS protocol for accessing third-party repositories

The figure shows how ABAP applications use the ECM integration layer to access documents in a repository.

How Data is Accessed Using the ECM Integration Layer

1. The user calls ECM content or ECM documents of an application in the Internet browser or a local WebDAV client.

2. The systems creates an HTTP request.

3. The application or the WebDAV server calls the programming interface (API) of the ECM integration layer.

4. The system establishes the connection to the ECM back-end system by using a connector that implements the service provider interface (SPI) of the ECM integration layer. For each connector, you can create one or more repositories as logical instances to be called directly. The data in the ECM back-end system is accessed using a repository.

   SAP provides a connector for the SAP ECM back-end system and a preconfigured repository as standard.

5. Users can access the selected data, in line with their repository authorization.