Connectivity

Use

Overview

Connectivity is the capability to connect systems or applications that have different technical communication capabilities to each other using SAP NetWeaver PI. Examples for technical communication capabilities are the HTTP protocol or a remote function call (RFC). The transformations of messages that are required at a technical level and that are necessary to connect the system to the runtime engine of SAP NetWeaver PI are performed by adapters. SAP NetWeaver PI provides a variety of adapters to connect applications that are based on completely different technical or application-specific protocols. The runtime engine - either the Integration Engine or the Advanced Adapter Engine - transforms each incoming message into an internal message format first before the message can be processed. This is done by an adapter at the inbound side (also referred to as: sender adapter). Depending on the characteristics of the receiver system, an adapter at the outbound side (a receiver adapter) then transforms the internal message format into the format or protocol the receiver system can handle.

Note

Do not confuse connectivity with mapping: Connectivity implies transformations between the technical or industry-specific protocols of the connected applications. A technical “protocol” can, for example, be a simple file format, or an IDoc format. An industry-specific protocol can be RosettaNet or EDI. In contrast to that, mapping is the transformation of the business data in the payload of the message, which can, for example, include the transformation of one data field format ( YYYYMMDD) to another ( YYYY-MM-DD).

In particular, SAP NetWeaver PI provides connectivity to:

Technical protocols such as JDBC, JMS, HTTP, and many more
Industry-specific protocols, for example, RosettaNet or CIDX
SAP applications that send or expect their data with IDoc and RFC

To ensure greatest possible spectrum of connectivity options, SAP provides a large set of own-developed adapters, and also accepts adapters developed by partners.

Additionally, customers can develop their own adapters with SAP NetWeaver PI in case they do not find the adapter to fit their needs.

The following figure illustrates the connectivity capabilities of SAP NetWeaver PI.

Figure 1: Connectivity Capabilities of SAP NetWeaver PI

You can find more information on the runtime engines of SAP NetWeaver PI - in particular, the Integration Engine and the Advanced Adapter Engine - under Installation and Connectivity Options .

Adapters

For an overview of all adapters provided by SAP, see Adapters .