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Use

Overview

Connectivity is the capability to connect systems or applications that have different technical communication capabilities to each other using SAP 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 PI are performed by adapters. SAP PI provides a variety of adapters to connect applications that are based on completely different technical or application-specific protocols. The runtime 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).

SAP provides the following connectivity solutions based on the business requirements.
Table 1: Connectivity Options Provided by SAP

Types of Systems or Applications

Connectivity Options

SAP & Non-SAP Systems

  • File/FTP(S) (File Systems / FTP Servers)

  • JDBC (RDBMS systems)

  • JMS (Messaging systems, e. g. MQSeries, SonicMQ)

  • SOAP (Web Services based on SOAP)

  • WS (Web Services based on WS Reliable Messaging)

  • HTTP(S)

  • Mail (Mail Servers via SMTP, IMAP4, POP3)

  • SAP Business Connector (SAP BC)

  • Marketplace (SAP Marketplaces)

  • SFTP (via Secure Connectivity add-on)

  • OData (via Connectivity add-on)

  • REST

Applications

  • RFC

  • IDoc

  • Proxy (ABAP and Java)

  • SuccessFactors (via Connectivity add-on)

SAP Industry Business Packages

  • RNIF 2.0 (RosettaNet)

  • RNIF 1.1 (RosettaNet)

  • CIDX (RNIF 1.1)

Business to Business (B2B) Systems

  • AS2

  • X.400

  • OFTP

To ensure maximum 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 PI in case they do not find the adapter to fit their needs.