The BAPI Knowledge Base
The BAPI Knowledge Base is the structure of all topics related to the development and use of BAPIs, and serves as the central access point for the BAPI documentation. The documentation can be divided into three separate areas:
- Further aspects of BAPI development
The diagram below emphasizes this fact and hints at the actual contents of the individual levels.
BAPI Development
This document, the
BAPI Programming Guide, will introduce the procedure model for developing your own BAPIs. Specifically, it will deal with the restrictions and guidelines associated with the development of BAPIs, discuss the requirements that BAPIs have to meet, and introduce support tools that can be used for development. A central role in the BAPI development process is played by the
BAPI Explorer. The BAPI Explorer enables easy access to all the relevant information in the BAPI environment (including general documentation as well details about special business object types and BAPIs). The Explorer integrates all the tools required for BAPI development and uses project forms to manage all the phases of the development process. This document deals exclusively with the development of new BAPIs. In contrast, instructions for enhancing, extending, and modifying existing BAPIs are described in Further Aspects of BAPI Development.
Further Aspects of BAPI Development
The documents located at this level contain topics that start with the standard case for new development described in the kernel and expand it with practical requirements. The following individual subjects are covered:
SAP Enhancements to Released BAPIs describes how SAP developers can enhance BAPIs that have already been released, and which procedure you have to use.
The document
Customer Enhancement and Modification of BAPIs explains how IBUs, partners, and customers can enhance and modify BAPIs supplied by SAP to meet their own specific needs. In detail, the document explains when the enhancement concept can be applied and when changes to BAPIs can only be implemented through the modification concept.
Using ALE Services describes how ALE inbound processing can be used to implement both synchronous and asynchronous BAPI calls, enabling distributed scenarios. In particular, this document describes in detail the process flow during asynchronous communication with BAPIs and explains which steps you have to perform when generating the BAPI-ALE interface to enable ALE inbound processing for BAPI use.
- Mass data transfer using BAPIs is described in the document
BAPIs for Mass Data Transfer. In addition, the programming model is introduced for designing BAPIs that are capable of processing mass data.
Using BAPIs in Clients
This area covers the different ways of using and accessing BAPIs. BAPIs can be called either from within an SAP system or from an external application program, using communication technologies like COM/DCOM or CORBA. This area encompasses the following documents:
- The document "Using BAPIs" describes how to retrieve all the meta data required for a call, how to use search help, and so on.
- The document "Using BAPIs in the Internet" describes how BAPIs can be used as XML interfaces (under the SAP Business Connector), making them suitable for implementing applications in the Internet.
- BAPI class libraries are available for access from Java; the business objects themselves are available as Java classes here. The resulting call architecture, the supported development environments, and introductory programming examples are included in the document "Accessing BAPIs with Java".
- SAP offers ActiveX Controls and the DCOM Connector to allow access to BAPIs from platforms that support OLE and COM/DCOM. The resulting call architecture and introductory programming examples are described in the document "Accessing BAPIs with COM/DCOM".
- Automatic access through CORBA-capable object request brokers is provided by supplying the business objects as CORBA objects. The resulting call architecture, the supported development environments, and introductory programming examples are included in the document "Accessing BAPIs with CORBA".