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Concept

For communicating with external systems, ABAP provides functional interfaces, an interface to the Internet, and data interfaces.

Function Interface

Remote function call can be used to call functions in other SAP systems or external systems. Calls can be made from remote-enabled function modules (in ABAP-based SAP systems) or from functions in external systems programmed in C, C++, Java, or .NET whose interfaces simulate a function module. It is also possible to call a function module from an external system.

Interface to the Internet

Internet Communication Manager (ICM) is a process of AS ABAP that enables AS ABAP to communicate directly with the Internet using HTTP/HTTPS/SMTP. ICM is used both as an interface for Web-based presentation components, such as Web Dynpro ABAP or UI5, and as a way using AS ABAP as both client and server for Web services. ABAP programs access ICM using classes and interfaces from Internet Communication Framework (ICF).

External File Interface

The statement CALL TRANSFORMATION can be used to handle XML documents. ABAP data and objects can be transformed to XML (known as serialization) and XML can be transformed to ABAP data and objects (known as deserialization). The called transformation must be defined in ABAP Workbench as an XSLT program (eXtensible Style Sheet Language Transformation) or as a simple transformation. XSLT is a W3C standard [W3C] that is integrated fully into ABAP runtime and which implements SAP-specific functions such as callbacks from a transformation to ABAP methods.

XSLT can only be used to define those transformations that map XML formats to XML formats. The special asXML format (asXML for ABAP serialization XML) enables 1:1 transformations of ABAP data to XML and back. ABAP data objects can be bound directly as input or output parameters to transformations that parse or render asXML. The ABAP runtime environment has the job of transforming ABAP data and objects to asXML formats implicitly.

Unlike the open XSLT standard, simple transformations are SAP's own language designed specifically for transformations from ABAP to XML and back. Simple transformations encompass far fewer expressions, but offer significant benefits over XSLT transformations in cases where they can be used. They are simple to write and extremely quick to execute. Furthermore, a single transformation generally defines both the serialization and the corresponding deserialization.

Alongside transformations using CALL TRANSFORMATION, XML data can be processed using the methods of classes and interfaces in class libraries. iXML Library (where i stands for integrated) enables XML data to be parsed to a DOM representation, this representation to be read, and then for it to be rendered to XML data. sXML Library (where s stands for serial) parses and renders XML data without using a DOM representation, however it does support multiple XML formats. In particular, a special JSON XML enables JSON data to be processed in ABAP and makes it possible to transform ABAP data from and to JSON using a special asJSON format (asJSON for ABAP JSON serialization).