Architecture of the Virus Scan Interface 

The structure of the Virus Scan Interface allows you to combine different products, systems, and platforms to scan your applications for viruses. This is possible, since SAP provides a certified interface for the virus scan products of other vendors.

The partners’ virus scan engines can, for example, have completely different architectures.  However, by integrating an adapter using a proprietary connection, any partner can, however, connect any existing virus scan product to the Virus Scan Interface.

On the SAP side, different VSI layers are used to include the ABAP and Java worlds, and to deal with platform dependencies (of operating systems and processors, that is, 32 or 64 bit) in the integration of the Virus Scan Interface.

The graphic below shows, on the left, the possible integration of external products using the adapter. Depending on whether the interface of the external product is public or proprietary, the adapter can either be integrated into the external product itself, or use the public interface of the external product and provide the Virus Scan Interface for the SAP side.

Elements of the Virus Scan Interface

The graphic below clarifies the layer structure of the Virus Scan Interface (SAP VSI API) and shows which parts are delivered by SAP, and which by the relevant partner.

The partner products either access the SAP VSI API directly with the scan engine or indirectly using a separate Virus Scan Adapter.

The SAP VSI API contains the functions required to configure and to initialize the partner’s scan engine. It also provides the parameters and data for every virus scan and processes the check result.

The SAP VSI library loads the certified partner products as a shared library.

ABAP or Java application programs start virus scans with dedicated classes and methods of the SAP Virus Scan Interface, which either make direct calls in the AS ABAP or AS Java, or use a Virus Scan Server using RFC. If you are using the Virus Scan Server using your own RFC client programs, refer to SAP Note 964305, which contains a Software Development Kit.

Software Layers of the Virus Scan Interface