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Component documentation SAP Data Provider Locate the document in its SAP Library structure

Purpose

The SAP Data Provider (referred to in this documentation as the Data Provider) is a standard data retrieval interface used by controls in the SAP GUI.

The Data Provider:

·        Manages the data

·        Maps the data on to standard Windows data types and data objects

·        Controls data conversion

The Data Provider consists of:

·        ABAP function modules

ABAP function modules are the Data Provider's interface to the application programmer or shell programmer. They use normal ABAP data types such as internal tables.

·        SAP GUI function calls

The SAP GUI contains 2 RFC-enabled functions. One function sends a table to the SAP GUI, the other function gets a table from the SAP GUI. The table passed by this call is a data object.

·        Local tables object

The local tables object manages all tables in a data pool, which is global within a single process space.

·        Data Provider object

The Data Provider object provides access to the data objects in the local tables object. You can either reference data in the local tables object or store references to data there.

The Data Provider object uses standard Windows data types and data objects, so users require no knowledge of internal tables or ABAP data types.

The Data Provider object also provides access to ftp: and http: servers, as well as files stored on local servers or file servers.

 

This graphic is explained in the accompanying text

 

The Data Provider is used by most ActiveX controls supplied by SAP. Examples of such controls are the Editor Control, HTML Control, Image Control, Tree Control, and Desktop OfficeIntegration.

Implementation Considerations

You need the Data Provider because:

·        The standard automation queue mechanism does not allow you to pass amounts of data exceeding 256 bytes through method calls, nor is it able to pass Binary Large Object (BLOB) data such as office documents, screen shots and editor contents.

·        External data sources (that is, sources that exist outside the SAP system or the current ABAP program) must be accessible. Examples of these external data sources are the Info Repository or local files.

Constraints

The SAP Data Provider is available only on Windows platforms (Windows95 or Windows NT 4.0+).

 

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