Idoc

SAP R/3 IDoc Cookbook for EDI and Interfaces
This book is an in-depth discussion and cookbook for IDoc development in R/3 for EDI and
eCommerce
SAP R/3 made an old dream come true: enter your business data once in your computer and trigger
all the following activities automatically, send the data to another computer without typing them in
again.
Facts, Know-how and recipes, that is all you can except from this book.
• Establish EDI communication with your clients or suppliers
• communicate in real-time with your legacy and satellite systems
• send and receive data to and from your production machine
• integrate PC or UNIX applications directly in R/3 with RFC
• automate your business from order entry to invoicing
• survey your purchase orders for goods receipt to clearing payments
The authors know, that nobody will believe them: but it is so imple and easy with R/3 to set up an
automated business scenario with IDocs, ALE and Workflow
This book teaches you how SAP R/3 approaches in a coherent concept the electronic data exchange
with another computer. With this know-how
Paper is out - EDI is in
No modern global playing company will allow their suppliers any more, to deliver their order, delivery,
transport and invoice information on paper. They require
Read in this book, why
• EDI will be unevitable in future global business
• EDI projects with R/3 would often cost five to ten times as much as necessary?
• IDocs and ALE are the ideal bridge between R/3 and legacy systems
• IDocs are the framework for a fully automated business workflow
In the technical part of the book you will learn, how to
• customize the R/3 IDoc engine
• interface IDocs with standard converters for X.12, EDIFACT, VDA etc.
• design your own IDoc structures
• write IDoc handler programs in an hour
• trigger IDocs from any R/3 application via messages or workflow
• set up automated workflow based on IDocs
• set up ALE scenarios for automated data replications

Preface
Proper Know-How Saves Costs
We always believed, what has been confirmed over and over again in manifold projects: The main
source to cutting project costs, is a proper education of the team. Giving the team members the same
book to read homogenizes the knowledge and sharpens a common sense within the group.
A Frequently Given Answers Book
This book is the result of thousands of hours of discussion and work with R/3 consultants, developer
and clients about interface development from and to R/3. When we started a new big project in
autumn 1998 at the Polar Circle, which involved a big number of interfaces, I observed curiously, that
my developers were ordering numerous books, all being related to EDI.
Well, those books did not say any word about R/3 and it was obvious that they were not very helpful
for our team. I consequently searched the directories for books on R/3 IDocs, but there was nothing.
So I started to compile my material on IDocs and ALE with the intent to publish it in the WWW. Since I
submit the site http://idocs.de to some search engines I got an astonishing amount of hits. Emails
asked for a written version of the stuff on the web. So – here it is.
Mystery EDI Unveiled
EDI and e-commerce are miracle words in today’s IT world. Like any other mystery it draws its magic
from the ignorance of the potential users. It is true that there are many fortune making companies in
the IT world who specialize on EDI. They sell software and know-how for giant sums of money.
Looking behind the scenes reveals, that the whole EDI business can simply be reduced to writing
some conversion programs. This is not too easy, but the secret of EDI companies is, that the so-called
standards are sold for a lot of money. As soon as you get hold of the documentation, things turn out to
be easy.
IDocs, A Universal Tool for Interface Programming
Although R/3 IDocs had been introduced as a tool to implement EDI solution for R/3, it is now
accepted as a helpful tool for any kind of interface programming. While this is not taught clearly in
SAP’s learning courses, we put our focus on writing an interface quickly and easily.
http://idocs.de
We praise cutting edge technology. So this book takes advantage of the modern multimedia hype.
Latest updates, corrections and more sophisticated and detailed examples are found on our web site.
Axel Angeli in December 1999
Logos! Informatik GmbH

Axel Angeli et.al. SAP R/3 Guide to EDI ISBN 3528157291
2

About The Authors
Axel Angeli,
is born in 1961. He is a Top Level SAP R/3 consultant and R/3 cross-application development coach.
He specializes in coaching of large multi-national, multi-language development teams and
troubleshooting development projects.
His job description is also known as computer logistics, a delicate discipline that methodically wakes
the synergetic effects in team to accelerate and mediate IT projects.
He is a learned Cybernetics scientist (also known as Artificial Intelligence) in the tradition of the Marvin
Minsky [The society of mind] and Synergetics group of Herman Haken and Maria Krell. His
competence in computer science is based on the works of Donald Knuth [The Art of Computer
Programming], Niklas Wirth (the creator of the PASCAL language), the object oriented approach as
described and developed during the XEROX PARC project (where the mouse and windows style GUIs
have been invented in the early 1970ies) and Borland languages.
Before his life as SAP consultant, he made a living as a computer scientist for medical biometry and
specialist for high precision industry robots. He concentrates now on big international projects. He
speaks fluently several popular languages including German, English, French and Slavic.
! axela@logosworld.de
Robi Gonfalonieri,
born in 1964 is a senior ABAP IV developer and R/3 consultant for SD and MM. He is a learned
economist turned ABAP IV developer. He specializes in international, multi-language projects both as
developer and SD consultant. He speaks fluently several languages including German, French,
English and Italian.
! robig@logosworld.de
Ulrich Streit,
born in 1974 is ABAP IV developer and interface specialist. He developed a serious of legacy system
interfaces and interface monitors for several clients of the process industry. ! ulis@logosworld.de
logosworld.com
is a group of loosely related freelance R/3 consultants and consulting companies. Current members of
the logosworld.com bond are the following fine companies:
Logos! Informatik GmbH, Brühl, Germany: R/3 technical troubleshooting
OSCo GmbH, Mannheim, Germany: SAP R/3 implementation partner
UNILAN Corp., Texas: ORACLE implementation competence
For true international R/3 competence and enthusiastic consultants,

email us ! info@logosworld.de
or visit http://idocs.de

3

For Doris, Paul, Mini und Maxi

4

Danke, Thank You, Graçias, Tack så mycket, Merci,
Bedankt, Grazie, Danjawad, Nandri, Se-Se
I due special thanks to a variety of people, clients, partners and friends. Their insistence in finding a
solution and their way to ask the right questions made this book only possible.
I want especially honour Francis Bettendorf, who has been exactly that genre of knowledgeable and
experienced IT professionals I had in mind, when writing this book. A man who understands an
algorithm when he sees it and without being too proud to ask precise and well-prepared questions. He
used to see me every day with the same phrase on the lips: "Every day one question." He heavily
influenced my writing style, when I tried to write down the answers to his questions. He also often
gave the pulse to write down the answers at all. At the age of 52, he joyfully left work the evening of
Tuesday the 23rd March 1999 after I had another fruitful discussion with him. He entered immortality
the following Wednesday morning. We will all keep his memory in our heart.
Thanks to Detlef and Ingmar Streit for doing the great cartoons.
Thanks also to Pete Kellogg of UNILAN Corp., Texas, Juergen Olbricht, Wolfgang Seehaus and his
team of OSCo, Mannheim for continuously forming such perfect project teams. It is joy working with
them.
Plans are fundamentally ineffective because the "circumstances of our actions are never fully
anticipated and are continuously changing around us". Suchman does not deny the existence or use
of plans but implies that deciding what to do next in the pursuit of some goal is a far more dynamic
and context-dependent activity than the traditional notion of planning might suggest.
Wendy Suchman, Xerox PARC http://innovate.bt.com/showcase/wearables/

Who Would Read This Book?
This book was written for the experienced R/3 consultants, who wants to know more about interface
programming and data migration. It is mainly a compilation of scripts and answers who arose during
my daily work as an R/3 coach.
Quid – What is that book about?
The R/3 Guide is a Frequently Given Answers book. It is a collection of answers, I have given to
questions regarding EDI over and over again, both from developers, consultants and client’s technical
staff. It is focussed on the technical aspect of SAP R/3 IDoc technology. It is not a tutorial, but a
supplement to the R/3 documentation and training courses.
Quis – Who should read the book?
The R/3 Guide has been written with the experienced consultant or ABAP developer in mind. It does
not expect any special knowledge about EDI, however, you should be familiar with ABAP IV and the
R/3 repository.
Quo modo – how do you benefit from the book?
Well, this book is a “How to” book, or a “Know-how”-book. The R/3 Guide has its value as a
compendium. It is not a novel to read at a stretch but a book, where you search the answer when you
have a question.
Quo (Ubi) – Where would you use the book?
You would most likely use the book when being in a project involved in data interfaces, not necessarily
a clean EDI project. IDocs are also helpful in data migration.
Quando – when should you read the book
The R/3 Guide is not a tutorial. You should be familiar with the general concept of IDocs and it is
meant to be used after you have attended an R/3 course on IDocs, ALE or similar. Instead of
attending the course you may alternatively read one of the R/3 IDoc tutorial on the market.
Cur – Why should you read the book
Because you always wanted to know the technical aspects of IDoc development, which you cannot
find in any of the publicly accessible R/3 documentation.

5

Table Of Contents
1 Where Has the Money Gone?.....................................................................................................8
1.1 Communication ....................................................................................................................................... 9
1.2 Psychology of Communication ............................................................................................................. 10
1.3 Phantom SAP Standards and a Calculation ........................................................................................... 11
1.4 Strategy.................................................................................................................................................. 12
1.5 Who Is on Duty?.................................................................................................................................... 13
1.6 Marcus T. Cicero ................................................................................................................................... 14
2 What Are SAP R/3 IDocs? .........................................................................................................15
2.1 What are IDocs? .................................................................................................................................... 16
2.2 Exploring a Typical Scenario ................................................................................................................ 17
3 Get a Feeling for IDocs .............................................................................................................19
3.1 Get a Feeling for IDocs ......................................................................................................................... 20
3.2 The IDoc Control Record ...................................................................................................................... 22
3.3 The IDoc Data ....................................................................................................................................... 23
3.4 Interpreting an IDoc Segment Info ........................................................................................................ 24
3.5 IDoc Base - Database Tables Used to Store IDocs................................................................................ 25
4 Exercise: Setting Up IDocs.......................................................................................................26
4.1 Quickly Setting up an Example ............................................................................................................. 27
4.2 Example: The IDoc Type MATMAS01 .................................................................................................. 28
4.3 Example: The IDoc Type ORDERS01 .................................................................................................. 29
5 Sample Processing Routines ...................................................................................................30
5.1 Sample Processing Routines.................................................................................................................. 31
5.2 Sample Outbound Routines .................................................................................................................. 32
5.3 Sample Inbound Routines...................................................................................................................... 34
6 IDocs Terminology and Basic Tools .......................................................................................36
6.1 Basic Terms ........................................................................................................................................... 37
6.2 Terminology .......................................................................................................................................... 38
7 IDocs Customising ....................................................................................................................41
7.1 Basic Customising Settings ................................................................................................................... 42
7.2 Creating an IDoc Segment WE31 .......................................................................................................... 45
7.3 Defining the Message Type (EDMSG).................................................................................................. 49
7.4 Define Valid Combination of Message and IDoc Types ....................................................................... 50
7.5 Assigning a Processing Function (Table EDIFCT )............................................................................. 51
7.6 Processing Codes................................................................................................................................... 52
7.7 Inbound Processing Code ...................................................................................................................... 55
8 IDoc Outbound Triggers ...........................................................................................................57
8.1 Individual ABAP ................................................................................................................................... 60
8.2 NAST Messages Based Outbound IDocs .............................................................................................. 61
8.3 The RSNAST00 ABAP ......................................................................................................................... 63
8.4 Sending IDocs Via RSNASTED ........................................................................................................... 64
8.5 Sending IDocs Via RSNAST00 ............................................................................................................ 65
8.6 Workflow Based Outbound IDocs......................................................................................................... 66
8.7 Workflow Event From Change Document ............................................................................................ 67
8.8 ALE Change Pointers ............................................................................................................................ 68
8.9 Activation of change pointer update...................................................................................................... 69
8.10 Dispatching ALE IDocs for Change Pointers........................................................................................ 70
9 IDoc Recipes ..............................................................................................................................72
9.1 How the IDoc Engine Works................................................................................................................. 73
9.2 How SAP Standard Processes Inbound IDocs....................................................................................... 74
9.3 How to Create the IDoc Data ................................................................................................................ 75
9.4 Interface Structure of IDoc Processing Functions ................................................................................. 76
9.5 Recipe to Develop an Outbound IDoc Function.................................................................................... 77
9.6 Converting Data into IDoc Segment Format ......................................................................................... 78

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10 IDoc Recipes...........................................................................................................................79
10.1 How the IDoc Engine Works................................................................................................................. 80
10.2 How SAP Standard Processes Inbound IDocs....................................................................................... 81
10.3 How to Create the IDoc Data ................................................................................................................ 82
10.4 Interface Structure of IDoc Processing Functions ................................................................................. 83
10.5 Recipe to Develop an Outbound IDoc Function.................................................................................... 84
10.6 Converting Data into IDoc Segment Format ......................................................................................... 85
11 Partner Profiles and Ports.....................................................................................................86
11.1 IDoc Type and Message Type ............................................................................................................... 87
11.2 Partner Profiles ...................................................................................................................................... 88
11.3 Defining the partner profile ( WE20 ) .................................................................................................... 89
11.4 Data Ports ( WE21 ) ............................................................................................................................... 90
12 RFC Remote Function Call....................................................................................................91
12.1 What Is Remote Function Call RFC? .................................................................................................... 92
12.2 RFC in R/3............................................................................................................................................. 93
12.3 Teleport Text Documents With RFC..................................................................................................... 94
12.4 Calling A Command Line Via RFC ?.................................................................................................... 96
13 Workflow Technology............................................................................................................98
13.1 Workflow in R/3 and Its Use for Development ..................................................................................... 99
13.2 Event Coupling (Event Linkage) ......................................................................................................... 100
13.3 Workflow from Change Documents.................................................................................................... 101
13.4 Trigger a Workflow from Messaging .................................................................................................. 102
13.5 Example, How to Create a Sample Workflow Handler ....................................................................... 103
14 ALE - Application Link Enabling ........................................................................................107
14.1 A Distribution Scenario Based on IDocs............................................................................................. 108
14.2 Example ALE Distribution Scenario ................................................................................................... 109
14.3 ALE Distribution Scenario .................................................................................................................. 111
14.4 Useful ALE Transaction Codes ........................................................................................................... 112
14.5 ALE Customizing SALE ..................................................................................................................... 114
14.6 Basic Settings SALE............................................................................................................................ 115
14.7 Define the Distribution Model (The "Scenario") BD64 ..................................................................... 116
14.8 Generating Partner Profiles WE20 ...................................................................................................... 118
14.9 Creating IDocs and ALE Interface from BAPI SDBG ......................................................................... 122
14.10 Defining Filter Rules ................................................................................................................... 127
15 Calling R/3 Via OLE/JavaScript ..........................................................................................130
15.1 R/3 RFC from MS Office Via Visual Basic ........................................................................................ 131
15.2 Call Transaction From Visual Basic for WORD 97 ............................................................................ 132
15.3 R/3 RFC from JavaScript .................................................................................................................... 134
15.4 R/3 RFC/OLE Troubleshooting........................................................................................................... 137
16 Batch Input Recording ........................................................................................................138
16.1 Recording a Transaction With SHDB .................................................................................................. 139
16.2 How to Use the Recorder Efficiently................................................................................................... 142
16.3 Include ZZBDCRECXX to Replace BDCRECXX ............................................................................. 143
16.4 ZZBRCRECXX_FB_GEN: Generate a Function from Recording ..................................................... 145
17 EDI and International Standards ........................................................................................149
17.1 EDI and International Standards.......................................................................................................... 150
17.2 Characteristics of the Standards .......................................................................................................... 151
17.3 XML .................................................................................................................................................... 152
17.4 ANSI X.12........................................................................................................................................... 154
18 EDI Converter .......................................................................................................................156
18.1 Converter ............................................................................................................................................. 157
Alphabetic Index .............................................................................................................................158
Last Page .........................................................................................................................................160

7

1 Where Has the Money Gone?
EDI projects can soon become very expensive. However, when analysing the reasons for high
costs, one finds quickly that it is not the technical implementation of the EDI project that
explodes the total costs.
Summary
Most of the implementation time and costs get lost in agreeing on common standards and establishing
formalities between the sender and the receiver
A successful EDI project requires that the developers on both ends sit together face to face
Sticking to a phantom “SAP standard” for IDocs, which does not actually exist in R/3, lets the costs of the
project soar

Just make a plan, Mach nur einen Plan,
And let your spirit hail. Sei ein großes Licht,
Then you make another plan, Dann mach noch einen zweiten Plan
And both will fail. Gehen tun sie beide nicht.
Bertold Brecht and Kurt Weill, Three Penny Opera

8

1.1 Communication
More than 80% of the time of an EDI project is lost in waiting for answers, trying to understand
proposals and retrieving data nobody actually needs.
A common language EDI means to exchange information between a sender and a receiver. Both
communication partners need to speak the same language to understand each other.
The language for EDI is comprised of the file formats and description languages
used in the EDI data files. In the simple case of exchanging plain data files, the
partners need to agree on a common file format.
The time spent on finding an agreement of a common format wastes a great deal of
money. See a common scenario:
The receiving party defines a file structure in which it likes to receive the data. This
is usually an image of the data structure of the receiving computer installation.
This is a good approach for the beginning, because you have to start somewhere. But
now the disaster takes course.
The proposal is sent to the other end via email. The developer of the sender system
takes a look at it and remains quiet. Then he starts programming and tries to squeeze
his own data into the structure.
Waiting for a response If it becomes too tedious, a first humble approach takes place to convince the other
party to change the initial file format. Again it is sent via email and the answer
comes some days later. Dead time, but the consultant is paid.
Badly described meaning It can be even worse: one party proposes a format and the other party does not
of a field understand the meaning of some fields.
Echoing Another field cannot be filled, because the sender does not have the information.
Looking closer you find out, that the information originated from the receiving
partner anyway. The programmer who proposed the format wanted it filled just for
his personal ease. This is known as Echoing, and it is always a "nice to have"
feature.
Using the same term for A real disaster happens if both parties use the same expression for different items. A
different objects classic case is the term “delivery”: What is known as an SD transport in R/3 is
known as a delivery in many legacy systems.
There are many other situation where one thing always happens: time is wasted.
And time is money.
Face to face The solution is quite simple: bring the people together. Developers of both parties
need to sit together, physically face to face. If each can see what the other person
does, they understand each other.

9

1.2 Psychology of Communication
Bringing developers together accelerates every project. Especially when both parties are so
much dependent on each other as in an EDI project, the partners need to communicate without
pause.
There is a negative psychological aspect in the communication process, if the parties
on both ends do not know each other or reduce communication with each other to
the absolute minimum,
Sporadic communication leads to latent aggression on both sides, while spending
time together builds up mutual tolerance. Communicating directly and regularly
positively affects the mutual respect. Once the parties accept the competence of each
other, they accept the other’s requirements more readily
Send them over the What if people sit on two ends of the world, one in America the other in Europe?
ocean. The answer is absolutely clear: get them a business class flight and send them over
the ocean.
Travel cost will be The time you will save when the people sit together compensates a multitude of the
refunded by the saved travel costs. So do not think twice.
time
Sitting together also enhances the comprehension of the total system. An EDI
communication forms a logical entity. But if your left hand does not know what
your right hand does, you will never handle things firmly and securely.
See the business on both Another effect is thus a mutual learning. It means learning how the business is
ends executed on both sides. Seeing the similarities and the differences allows flexibility.
And it allows for correct decision making without needing to ask the communication
partner.

10

1.3 Phantom SAP Standards and a Calculation
SAP R/3 delivers a serious of predefined EDI programs. Many project administrators see them
as standards which should not be manipulated or modified. The truth is, that these IDoc
processing functions are recommendations and example routines, which can be replaced be
own routines in customizing.
Predefined not standard SAP R/3 is delivered with a series of predefined IDoc types and corresponding
handler function modules.
Some of the handler programs have been designed with user-exits where a developer
can implement some data post-processing or add additional information to an IDoc.
You must always see those programs as examples for IDoc handling. If the
programs already do what you want, it is just fine. But you should never stick to
those programs too long, if you need different data to be sent.
R/3 IDocs were primarily The R/3 standard IDoc programs were designed – consciously or not - with the
designed for the German association of automobile manufacturers (VDA) in mind. The VDA is a
automotive industry committee which defines EDI standards for their members, e.g. Volkswagen, BMW,
Daimler-Benz-Chrysler. Not every car manufacturer, e.g. FORD uses these
recommendations. Other industries define their own standards which are not present
in R/3.
If a file exchange format already exists for your company or your industry, you may
want to use that one. This means typing in the file format, writing the program that
fills the structure and customising the new IDoc and message types.
A simple calculation:
Calculation Discussing the solutions 5 days
Typing in the file formats 1/2 day
Writing the program to fill the segments 1 days
Adjust the customizing 1/2 day
Testing and correcting everything 3 days
Travel time 2 days
Total 12 days
This is not an optimistic calculation. You will notice that eight out of the twelve
days are accounting for non IT related tasks like discussing solutions, educating
each other and testing.
If a project takes longer than that, it simply means that unanticipated time was spent
discussing and adapting solutions, because things have changed or turned out to be
different as initially planned.

11

1.4 Strategy
Do not loose your time in plans. Have prototypes developed and take them as a basis.
You cannot predict all Do not stick to the illusion, that a proper design in the beginning will lead to a good
eventualities result. It is the age old error in trusting the theorem of Laplace:
Laplace “Tell me all the facts of the world about the presence and I will predict the future
for you.”
Heisenberg and Let aside the fact, that modern physics since Heisenberg and his uncertainty theorem
uncertainty has proven, that even knowing everything about now, does not allow to predict the
future deterministically.
You do not know the If you want to know all the eventualities of a project, you have to be gone through
premises before similar projects. It is only your experience that allows you to make a good plan.
However, you usually do a project only once, unless you are a consultant.
The question is: If you have never been through an EDI project, how will you obtain
the necessary experience?
Prototypes The answer is: make a prototype, a little project. Do not loose your time in writing
plans and detailed development requests. Rather start writing a tiny prototype.
Introduce this prototype and maintain your solution. Listen to the arguments and
improve the prototype steadily.
This is how you learn.
This is how you succeed.

12

1.5 Who Is on Duty?
Writing interface programs is much like translating languages. The same rule apply.
Writing interface programs is like translating a language. You have information
distributed by one system and you have to translate this information into a format
that the other system understands.
A translation should always be done by a native speaker of the target language. This
applies to interface programs as well.
If data needs to be converted, do this always in the target system. If in doubt let the
source system send everything it can. If the target does not need the information it
can ignore it.

13

1.6 Marcus T. Cicero
Some may have learned it in school: the basic rules of rhetoric according to Cicero. You will
know the answers, when your program is at its end. Why don’t you ask the questions in the
beginning? Ask the right question, then you will know.
When starting a new task, you have always to answer the magic “Q” s of rhetoric. It
is a systematic way to get the answer you need to know anyway.
Quid – What What is the subject you are dealing with? Make clear the context you are in and that
all parties talk about the same.
Quis – Who Who is involved in the business? Get the names and make sure, that they know each
other before the project enters the hot phase.
Quo modo – how How do you want to achieve your goal? Be sure all participants choose the same
methods. And how do you name the things? Agree on a common terminology!
Quo (Ubi) – where Where do things take place? Decide for a common place to work. Decide the
platform, where elements of the programs should run.
Quando - when When do you expect a result? Define milestones and discuss the why when the
milestones were missed. You should always check why your initial estimate was
wrong, also if you are faster than planned.
Cur – Why Why do you want to install a certain solution? Isn’t there a better alternative?

14

2 What Are SAP R/3 IDocs?
IDocs are SAP’s file format to exchange data with a foreign system. This chapter is intended as
an introduction to the concept.
Summary
IDocs are an ASCII file format to exchange data between computers; the format is chosen arbitrarily
IDocs are similar to segmented files; they are not a description language like ANSI X.12, EDIFACT or XML
The IDoc contents are processed by function modules, which can be assigned in customizing

15

2.1 What are IDocs?
IDocs are structured ASCII files (or a virtual equivalent). They are the file format used by SAP
R/3 to exchange data with foreign systems.
IDocs are SAP's IDocs are simple ASCII data streams. When they are stored to a disk file, the IDocs
implementation of are simple flat files with lines of text, where the lines are structured into data fields.
structured text files The typical structured file has records, each record starting with a leading string that
identifies the record type. Their specification is stored in the data dictionary.
Electronic Interchange IDocs is the acronym for Interchange Document. This indicates a set of (electronic)
Document information which builds a logical entity. An IDoc is e.g. all the data of a single
customer in your customer master data file, or the IDoc is all the data of a single
invoice.
Data Is transmitted in IDoc data is usually exchanged between systems and partners that are completely
ASCII format, i.e. human independent. Therefore, the data should be transmitted in a format that can easily be
readable form corrected by the computer operators. It is therefore mandatory to post the data in a
human readable form.
Nowadays, this means that data is coded in ASCII format, including numbers which
are sent as a string of figures 0 to 9. Such data can easily be read with any text editor
on any computer, be it a PC, Macintosh, UNIX System, S/390 or any internet
browser.
IDocs exchange The information which is exchanged by IDocs is called a message and the IDoc is
messages the physical representation of such a message. The name “messages” for the
information sent via IDocs is used in the same ways as other EDI standards. .
IDocs are used like Everybody who has ever dealt with interface programming, will find IDocs very
classical interface files much like the hierarchical data files used in traditional data exchange.
International standards like the ODETTE or VDA formats are designed in the same
way as IDocs are.
XML, ANSI X:12 or Other EDI standards like XML, ANSI X.12 or EDIFACT/UN are based on a data
EDIFACT use a description language. They differ principally from the IDocs concept, because they
description language use a programming language syntax (e.g. like Postscript or HTML) to embed the
data.

16

2.2 Exploring a Typical Scenario
The IDoc process is a straight forward communication scenario. A communication is
requested, then data is retrieved, wrapped and sent to the destination in a predefined format
and envelope.

A typical EDI/IDoc
1 Application writes
scenario in R/3 data to R/3
database tables

R/3 Application
R/3 Database File Transaction
(e.g. DB/2,
ADABAS, ORACLE
ABAP

IDoc Creating
Function Module

2 An Application
request sending
IDoc of an IDoc
Document 3 An Idoc handler
Structured creates the Idoc and
ASCII File converts data to
ASCII format

XML, X.12.
EDIFACT ...
Converter
(PC program)
5 Data is sent
optional to receiver,
4 An external program e.g. via FTP,
ISDN protocol
(e.g. running on NT)
converts to international
standards

Figure 1: A typical EDI scenario from the viewpoint of R/3

The illustration above displays a sketch for a typical IDoc communication scenario.
The steps are just the same as with every communication scenario. There is a
requesting application, a request handler and a target.
The sketch shows the communication outbound R/3. Data is leaving the R/3 system.

17

R/3 application creates An R/3 application creates data and updates the database appropriately. An
data application can be a transaction, a stand-alone ABAP Report or any tool that can
update a database within R/3.
IDoc engine picks up the If the application thinks that data needs to be distributed to a foreign system, it
request triggers the IDoc mechanism, usually by leaving a descriptive message record in the
message table NAST.
The application then either directly calls the IDoc engine or a collector job
eventually picks up all due IDoc messages and determines what to do with them.
IDoc engine determines If the engine believes that data is ready to be sent to a partner system, then it
a handler function from determines the function module which can collect and wrap the required IDoc data
customising into an IDoc.
In IDoc customising, you specify the name of the function module to use. This can
either be one which is predefined by R/3 standard or a user-written one.
IDoc is backup up in R/3 When the IDoc is created it is stored in an R/3 table and from there it is sent to the
and sent out foreign system.
Conversion to standards If the foreign system requires a special conversion, e.g. to XML, EDIFACT or X.12
is done by external then this job needs to be done by an external converter, like the Seeburger ELKE™
program system. These converters are not part of R/3.
If you have to decide on a converter solution, we strongly recommend using a plain
PC based solution. Conversion usually requires a lot of fine tuning which stands
and falls with the quality of the provided tools.

18

3 Get a Feeling for IDocs
IDocs are relatively simple to understand. But, like most simple things they are difficult to
explain. In this chapter we want to look at some IDocs and describe their elements, so that you
can get a feeling for them.
Summary
The first record in an IDoc is a control record describing the content of the data
All but the first record are data records with the same formal record structure
Every record is tagged with the segment type and followed by the segment data
The interpretation of the segment is done by the IDoc application
Both sent and received IDocs are logged in R/3 tables for further reference and archiving purposes

19

3.1 Get a Feeling for IDocs
For the beginning we want to give you a feeling of what IDocs are and how they may look ,
when you receive them as plain text files.
IDocs are plain ASCII IDocs are basically a small number of records in ASCII format, building a logical
files (resp. a virtual entity. It makes sense to see an IDoc as a plain and simple ASCII text file, even if it
equivalent) might be transported via other means.
Control record plus many Any IDoc consists of two sections:
data records = 1 IDoc
the control record
which is always the first line of the file and provides the administrative information.
the data record
which contains the application dependent data, as in our example below the material
master data.
We will discuss the exchange of the material master IDoc MATMAS in the
paragraphs that follow..
IDocs are defined in The definition of the IDoc structure MATMAS01 is deposited in the data dictionary
WE31 and can be viewed with WE30 .
IDOC Number Sender Receiver Port Message Type IDoc Type
0000123456 R3PARIS R3MUENCHEN FILE ORDERS ORDERS01

Figure 2: Simplified example of an IDoc control record for sales orders

SegmentType Sold-To Ship-To Value Deldate User
ORDERHEADER 1088 1089 12500,50 24121998 Micky Maus

Figure 3: Simplified example of an IDoc data record for sales orders

20

EDI_DC40 043000000000001234540B 3012 MATMAS03 MATMAS DEVCLNT100 PROCLNT100
E2MARAM001 043000000000001234500000100000002005TESTMAT1 19980303ANGELI 19981027SAPOSS
E2MAKTM001 043000000000001234500000300000103005EEnglish Name for TEST Material 1 EN
E2MAKTM001 043000000000001234500000400000103005FFrench Name for TEST Material 1 FR

E2MARCM001 0430000000000012345000005000001030050100DEAVB 901 PD9010 0 0.00 EXX 0.000
E2MARDM001 0430000000000012345000006000005040051000D 0.000 0.000
E2MARDM001 0430000000000012345000007000005040051200D 0.000 0.000
E2MARMM 043000000000001234500000900000103005KGM1 1 0.000 0.000

Part of the content of an IDoc file for IDoc type MATMAS01

0000000000012345 DEVCLNT100 PROCLNT100 19991103 210102
E1MARAM 005 TESTMAT1 19980303 ANGELI 19981027SAPOSS KDEAVCB
E1MAKTM 005 D German Name for TEST Material 1 DE
E1MAKTM 005 E English Name for TEST Material 1 EN
E1MAKTM 005 F French Name for TEST Material 1 FR
E1MARCM 005 0100 DEAVB 901
E1MARCM 005 0150 DEAVB 901
21

E1MARDM 005 1000 D 0.000 0.000

3.2 The IDoc Control Record
The very first record of an IDoc package is always a control record. The structure of this
control record is the DDic structure EDIDC and describes the contents of the data contained in
the package.
Control record serves as The control record carries all the administrative information of the IDoc, such as its
cover slip for the origin, its destination and a categorical description of the contents and context of
transport the attached IDoc data. This is very much like the envelope or cover sheet that
would accompany any paper document sent via postal mail.
Control record is used by For R/3 inbound processing, the control record is used by the standard IDoc
the receiver to determine processing mechanism to determine the method for processing the IDoc. This
the processing algorithm method is usually a function module but may be a business object as well. The
processing method can be fully customised.
Control record not Once the IDoc data is handed over to a processing function module, you will no
necessary to process the longer need the control record information. The function modules are aware of the
IDoc Data individual structure of the IDoc type and the meaning of the data. In other words: for
every context and syntax of an IDoc, you would write an individual function module
or business object (note: a business object is also a function module in R/3) to deal
with.
Control Record structure The control record has a fixed pre-defined structure, which is defined in the data
is defined as EDIDC in dictionary as EDIDC and can be viewed with SE11 in the R/3 data dictionary. The
DDic header of our example will tell us, that the IDoc has been received from a sender
with the name PROCLNT100 and sent to the system with the name DEVCLNT100 .
It further tells us that the IDoc is to be interpreted according to the IDoc definition
called MATMAS01 .
MATMAS01 ... DEVCLNT100 PROCLNT100 ...

Figure 4: Schematic example of an IDoc control record

Sender The sender's identification PROCLNT100 tells the receiver who sent the IDoc. This
serves the purpose of filtering unwanted data and also provides the opportunity to
process IDocs differently with respect to the sender.
Receiver The receiver's identification DEVCLNT100 should be included in the IDoc header to
make sure that the data has reached the intended recipient.
IDoc Type The name of the IDoc type MATMAS01 is the key information for the IDoc
processor. It is used to interpret the data in the IDoc records, which otherwise would
be nothing more than a sequence of meaningless characters.

22

3.3 The IDoc Data
All records in the IDocs, which come after the control record are the IDoc data. They are all
structured alike, with a segment information part and a data part which is 1000 characters in
length, filling the rest of the line.
All IDoc data record have All records of an IDoc are structured the same way, regardless of their actual
a segment info part and content. They are records with a fixed length segment info part to the left, which is
1000 characters for data followed by the segment data, which is always 1000 characters long.
IDoc type definition can We will examine an IDoc of type MATMAS01 . The IDoc type MATMAS01 is used
be edited with WE30 for transferring material master data via ALE. You can view the definition of any
IDoc data structure directly within R/3 with transaction WE30.

Segment Info Segment Data-!

...E1MARAM ....00000001234567… Material base segment

...E1MARCM ....PL01… Plant Segment

...E1MARDM ....SL01 Storage location data

...E1MARDM ....SL02 Another storage location

...E1MARCM ....PL02 Another plant

Example of an IDoc with one segment per line, an info tag to the left of each segment and
the IDoc data to the right

Data and segment info Regardless of the used IDoc type, all IDocs are stored in the same database tables
are stored in EDID4 EDID4 for release 4.x and EDID3 for release 2.x and 3.x. Both release formats are
slightly different with respect to the lengths of some fields. Please read the chapter
on port types for details.
Depending on the R/3 release, the IDoc data records are formatted either according
the DDic structure EDID3 or EDID3. The difference between the two structures
reflects mainly the changes in the R/3 repository, which allow longer names starting
from release 4.x.

23

3.4 Interpreting an IDoc Segment Info
All IDoc data records are exchanged in a fixed format, regardless of the segment type. The
segment’s true structure is stored in R/3’s repository as a DDic structure of the same name.
R/3 is only interested in The segment info tells the IDoc processor how the current segment data is structured
the segment name and should be interpreted. The information, which is usually the only interest, is the
name of the segment EDID4-SEGNAM.
Segment name tells the The segment name corresponds to a data dictionary structure with the same name,
data structure which has been created automatically when defining the IDoc segment definition
with transaction WE31 .
Remaining information is For most applications, the remaining information in the segment info can be ignored
only for foreign systems as being redundant. Some older, non-SAP-compliant partners may require it. E.g.
the IDoc segment info will also store the unique segment number for systems, which
require numeric segment identification.
To have the segment made up for processing in an ABAP, it is usually wise to move
the segment data into a structure, which matches the segment definition.
For a segment of type e1maram the following coding is commonly used:
Data in EDID4-SDATA
TABLES: e1maram.
. . .
MOVE edidd-sdata TO e1maram.

Then you can access the fields of the IDoc segment EDIDD-SDATA as fields of the
structure e1maram .
Data in EDID4-SDATA WRITE: e1maram-matnr.

Sample coding The following coding sample, shows how you may read a MATMAS IDoc and
extract the data for the MARA and MARC segments to some internal variables and
tables.
DATA: xmara LIKE e1maram.
DATA: tmarc AS STANDARD TABLE OF e1marcm
WITH HEADER LINE.
LOOP AT edidd.
CASE edidd-segnam.
WHEN 'E1MARAM'.
MOVE edidd-sdata TO xmara.
WHEN 'E1MARCM'.
MOVE edidd-sdata TO tmarc.
APPEND tmarc.
ENDCASE.
ENDLOOP.
now do something with xmara and tmarc.

24

3.5 IDoc Base - Database Tables Used to Store IDocs
When R/3 processes an IDoc via the standard inbound or outbound mechanism, the IDoc is
stored in the tables. The control record goes to table EDIDC and the data goes to table EDID4.
All inbound and All IDoc, whether sent or received are stored in the table EDID4. The corresponding
outbound Documents are control file header goes into EDIDC.
stored in EDID4
There are standard programs that read and write the data to and from the IDoc base.
These programs and transaction are heavily dependent on the customising, where
rules are defined which tell how the IDocs are to be processed.
Avoid reinventing the Of course, as IDocs are nothing more than structured ASCII data, you could always
wheel process them directly with an ABAP. This is certainly the quick and dirty solution,
bypassing all the internal checks and processing mechanisms. We will not reinvent
the wheel here.
Customising is done from To do this customising setting, check with transaction WEDI and see the points,
the central menu WEDI dealing with ports, partner profiles, and all under IDoc development.

Figure 5: Tables used to store the IDoc within R/3

25

4 Exercise: Setting Up IDocs
The best way to learn is by doing. This chapter tells you how to set up your R/3 system so that
it can send IDocs to itself. When sending IDocs to your own system you can test the
procedures without the need for a second client or installation.
Summary
Define a new internal RFC destination INTERNAL
Explore both the transactions WEDI and SALE and adjust the settings as necessary
Use transaction BALE to generate an arbitrary IDoc

26

4.1 Quickly Setting up an Example
If you have a naked system, you cannot send IDocs immediately. This chapter will guide you
through the minimum steps to see how the IDoc engine works.
You can access most of the transactions used in the example below in the menu
WEDI and SALE.
Check EDID4 with SE16 We will assume, that we want to send material master data from the current system
to a remote system. To simulate this scenario we do not need to have a second
system. With a little trick, we can set up the system to send an IDoc back to the
sending client.
We will set up the system to use an RFC call to itself. Therefore we need to define
an RFC remote destination, which points back to our own client. There is a virtual
RFC destination called NONE which always refers to the calling client.
Declare the RFC RFC destinations are installed with the transaction SM59. Create a new R/3
destination to receive the destination of type "L" (Logical destination) with the name INTERNAL and the
IDoc destination NONE.
Note: Do not use RFC type internal. Although you could create them manually, they
are reserved for being automatically generated. However, there is the internal
connection "NONE" or "BACK" which would do the same job as the destination we
are creating now.
Define a data port for The next step is defining a data port, which is referenced by the IDoc sending
INTERNAL mechanism to send the IDoc through. Declaring the port is done by transaction
WE21.
Declare a new ALE We will now declare an ALE connection from our client to the partner INTERNAL.
model with SALE . ALE uses IDocs to send data to a remote system. There is a convenient transaction
to send material master data as IDocs via the ALE.
Declare MATMAS01 as a The set up is done in transaction SALE. You first create a new ALE model, to avoid
valid ALE object to be interfering with eventual existing definitions. Then you simply add the IDoc
sent to INTERNAL message MATMAS as a valid path from your client to INTERNAL.
Send the IDoc with In order to send the IDoc, you call the transaction BALE and choose the distribution
transaction BALE. of material master data (BD10). Choose a material, enter INTERNAL as receiver
and go.
Display IDocs with WE05 To see, which IDocs have been sent, you can use the transaction WE05. If you did
everything as described above, you will find the IDocs with an error status of 29,
meaning that there is no valid partner profile. This is true, because we have not
defined one yet.

27

4.2 Example: The IDoc Type MATMAS01
To sharpen your understanding, we will show you an example of an IDoc of type MATMAS01,
which contains material master data.
Note: You can check with transaction WE05 , if there are already any IDocs in your
system.
IDoc structure can be You can call transaction WE30 to display the structure of the Idoc type of the found
seen with WE30 IDoc.
Below is the display of an IDoc of type MATMAS01.

Figure 6: Structure of the MATMAS01 Idoc type

MATMAS01 mirrors widely the structure of R/3’s material master entity.
Content of IDoc file If this IDoc would have been written to a file, the file content would have looked
similar to this:
...MATMAS01 DEVCLNT100 INTERNAL...
...E1MARAM ...and here the data
...E1MARCM ...and here the data
...E1MARDM ...and here the data

28

ORDERS01 is used for
purchasing and sales
order data

IDoc structure can be
seen with WE30

Content of IDoc file

4.3 Example: The IDoc Type ORDERS01
To allow an interference, here is a sample of IDoc type ORDERS01 which is used for purchase
orders and sales orders.
Purchasing and sales orders naturally share the same IDoc type because what is a
purchase order on the sender side will become a sales order on the receiver side.
Other than MATMAS01, the IDoc type ORDERS01 does not reflect the structure of
the underlying RDB entity, neither the one of SD (VA01) nor the one of MM
(ME21). The structure is rather derived from the EDI standards used in the
automobile industry. Unfortunately, this does not make it easier to read.
Note: With transaction WE05 you can monitor, if there are already any IDocs in
your system.
You can call transaction WE30 to display the structure of the IDoc type of the found
IDoc
If this IDoc would have been written to a file, the file content would have looked
similar to this:
...ORDERS01 DEVCLNT100 INTERNAL...
...E1EDKA1 ....and here the data
...E1EDKA2 ....and here the data
...E1EDP19 ....and here the data

Figure 7: Structure of the ORDERS01 IDoc type

29

5 Sample Processing Routines
This chapter demonstrates how an IDoc is prepared in R/3 for outbound and how a receiving
R/3 system processes the IDoc.

Keep
It
S imple and
S mart

30

5.1 Sample Processing Routines
Creating and processing IDocs is primarily a mechanical task, which is certainly true for most
interface programming. We will show a short example that packs SAP R/3 SAPscript standard
text elements into IDocs and stores them.
Outbound function Outbound IDocs from R/3 are usually created by a function module. This function
module is dynamically called by the IDoc engine. A sophisticated customising
defines the conditions and parameters to find the correct function module.
The interface parameters of the processing function need to be compatible with a
well-defined standard, because the function module will be called from within
another program.
Inbound function IDoc inbound functions are function modules with a standard interface, which will
interpret the received IDoc data and prepare it for processing.
The received IDoc data is processed record by record and interpreted according to
the segment information provided with each record. The prepared data can then be
processed by an application, a function module, or a self-written program.
The example programs in the following chapters will show you how texts from the
text pool can be converted into an IDoc and processed by an inbound routine to be
stored into another system.
The following will give you the basics to understand the example:
Text from READ_TEXT SAP R/3 allows the creation of text elements, e.g. with transaction SO10. Each
standard text element has a control record which is stored in table STXH. The text
lines themselves are stored in a special cluster table. To retrieve the text from the
cluster, you will use the standard function module function READ_TEXT . We
will read such a text and pack it into an IDoc. That is what the following simple
function module does.
If there is no convenient routine to process data, the easiest way to hand over the
data to an application is to record a transaction with transaction SHDB and create a
simple processing function module from that recording.
Outbound is triggered by Outbound routines are called by the triggering application, e.g. the RSNAST00
the application program.
Inbound is triggered by Inbound processing is triggered by the central IDoc inbound handler, which is
an external event usually the function module IDOC_INPUT . This function is usually activated by
the gatekeeper who receives the IDoc.

31

5.2 Sample Outbound Routines
The most difficult work when creating outbound IDocs is the retrieval of the application data
which needs sending. Once the data is retrieved, it needs to be converted to IDoc format, only.
FUNCTION
*"----------------------------------------------------------------------
*"*"Lokale Schnittstelle:
*" IMPORTING
*" VALUE(I_TDOBJECT) LIKE THEAD-TDOBJECT DEFAULT 'TEXT'
*" VALUE(I_TDID) LIKE THEAD-TDID DEFAULT 'ST'
*" VALUE(I_TDNAME) LIKE THEAD-TDNAME
*" VALUE(I_TDSPRAS) LIKE THEAD-TDSPRAS DEFAULT SY-LANGU
*" EXPORTING
*" VALUE(E_THEAD) LIKE THEAD STRUCTURE THEAD
*" TABLES
*" IDOC_DATA STRUCTURE EDIDD OPTIONAL
*" IDOC_CONTRL STRUCTURE EDIDC OPTIONAL
*" TLINES STRUCTURE TLINE OPTIONAL
*"----------------------------------------------------------------------
* *** --- Reading the application Data --- ****
CALL FUNCTION 'READ_TEXT'
EXPORTING
ID = T_HEAD-TDID
LANGUAGE = T_HEAD-TDSPRAS
NAME = T_HEAD-TDNAME
OBJECT = T_HEAD-TDOBJECT
IMPORTING
HEADER = E_THEAD
TABLES
LINES = TLINES.
* *** --- Packing the application data into IDoc
MOVE E_THEAD TO IDOC_DATA-SDATA.
MOVE 'YAXX_THEAD' TO IDOC_DATA-SEGNAM.
APPEND IDOC_DATA.
LOOP AT TLINES.
* *** -- we still need to fill more segment info
MOVE 'YAXX_TLINE' TO IDOC_DATA-SEGNAM.
APPEND IDOC_DATA.
ENDLOOP.
* *** --- Packing the IDoc control record --- ****
CLEAR IDOC_CONTRL.
IDOC_CONTRL-IDOCTP = 'YAXX_TEXT'.
* *** -- we still should fill more control record info
APPEND IDOC_CONTRL.
ENDFUNCTION.

Figure 8: Sample IDoc outbound function module

We will show a short example that packs SAP R/3 SapScript standard text elements
into IDocs and stores them back to texts in a second routine. The text elements can
be edited with SO10.
Text from READ_TEXT Each R/3 standard text element has a header record which is stored in table STXH.
The text lines themselves are stored in a special cluster table. To retrieve the text
from the cluster, you will use the standard function module function
READ_TEXT.
Outbound processing The program below will retrieve a text document from the text pool, convert the text
lines into IDoc format, and create the necessary control information.
The first step is reading the data from the application database by calling the
function module READ_TEXT.

32

* *** --- Reading the application Data --- ****
EXPORTING
ID = T_HEAD-TDID
LANGUAGE = T_HEAD-TDSPRAS
NAME = T_HEAD-TDNAME
OBJECT = T_HEAD-TDOBJECT
IMPORTING
HEADER = E_THEAD
TABLES
LINES = TLINES.

Figure 9: Reading data

Our next duty is to pack the data into the IDoc record. This means moving the
application data to the data part of the IDoc record structure EDIDD and filling the
corresponding segment information.
* *** --- Packing the application data into Idoc
* the receiver needs the segment name
in order to interpret the segment
MOVE 'YAXX_THEAD' TO IDOC_DATA-SEGNAM.
APPEND IDOC_DATA.
LOOP AT TLINES.
* *** -- we still need to fill more segment info
MOVE 'YAXX_TLINE' TO IDOC_DATA-SEGNAM.
APPEND IDOC_DATA.
ENDLOOP.

Figure 10: Converting application data into IDoc format

Finally, we have to provide a correctly filled control record for this IDoc. If the IDoc
routine is used in a standard automated environment, it is usually sufficient to fill the
field EDIDC-IDOCTP with the IDoc type, EDIDC-MESTYP with the context
message type and the receiver name. The remaining fields are automatically filled
by the standard processing routines if applicable.
* *** --- Packing the Idoc control record --- ****
CLEAR IDOC_CONTRL.
* *** -- we still need to fill more control rec info
APPEND IDOC_CONTRL.

Figure 11: Filling control record information

33

5.3 Sample Inbound Routines
Inbound processing is basically the reverse process of an outbound.. The received IDoc has to
be unpacked, interpreted and transferred to an application for further processing.
FUNCTION
*"----------------------------------------------------------------------
*" IMPORTING
*" VALUE(INPUT_METHOD) LIKE BDWFAP_PAR-INPUTMETHD
*" VALUE(MASS_PROCESSING) LIKE BDWFAP_PAR-MASS_PROC
*" EXPORTING
*" VALUE(WORKFLOW_RESULT) LIKE BDWFAP_PAR-RESULT
*" VALUE(APPLICATION_VARIABLE) LIKE BDWFAP_PAR-APPL_VAR
*" VALUE(IN_UPDATE_TASK) LIKE BDWFAP_PAR-UPDATETASK
*" VALUE(CALL_TRANSACTION_DONE) LIKE BDWFAP_PAR-CALLTRANS
*" TABLES
*" IDOC_CONTRL STRUCTURE EDIDC
*" IDOC_DATA STRUCTURE EDIDD
*" IDOC_STATUS STRUCTURE BDIDOCSTAT
*" RETURN_VARIABLES STRUCTURE BDWFRETVAR
*" SERIALIZATION_INFO STRUCTURE BDI_SER
*"----------------------------------------------------------------------
DATA: XTHEAD LIKE THEAD .
DATA: TLINES LIKE TLINE OCCURS 0 WITH HEADER LINE.
CLEAR XTHEAD.
REFRESH TLINES.
* *** --- Unpacking the IDoc --- ***
LOOP AT IDOC_DATA.
CASE IDOC_DATA-SEGNAM.
WHEN 'YAXX_THEAD'.
MOVE IDOC_DATA-SDATA TO XTHEAD.
WHEN 'YAXX_TLINE'.
MOVE IDOC_DATA-SDATA TO TLINES.
ENDCASE.
ENDLOOP.
* *** --- Calling the application to process the received data --- ***
CALL FUNCTION 'SAVE_TEXT'
EXPORTING
HEADER = XTHEAD
SAVEMODE_DIRECT = 'X'
TABLES
LINES = TLINES.
ADD SY-SUBRC TO OK.
* füllen IDOC_Status
* fill IDOC_Status
IDOC_STATUS-DOCNUM = IDOC_CONTRL-DOCNUM.
IDOC_STATUS-MSGV1 = IDOC_CONTRL-IDOCTP.
IDOC_STATUS-MSGV2 = XTHEAD.
IDOC_STATUS-MSGID = '38'.
IDOC_STATUS-MSGNO = '000'.
IF OK NE 0.
IDOC_STATUS-STATUS = '51'.
IDOC_STATUS-MSGTY = 'E'.
ELSE.
IDOC_STATUS-MSGTY = 'S'.
CALL_TRANSACTION_DONE = 'X'.
ENDIF.
APPEND IDOC_STATUS.
ENDFUNCTION.

Figure 12: Sample IDoc outbound function module

Inbound processing This example of a simple inbound function module expects as input an IDoc with
function module rows of plain text as created in the outbound example above. The procedure will
extract the text name and the text line from the IDoc and hand over the text data to
the function module SAVE_TEXT which will store the text in the text pool.
Unpacking the IDoc data The received IDoc data is processed record by record and data is sorted out

34

according to the segment type.
* *** --- Unpacking the IDoc --- ***
LOOP AT IDOC_DATA.bb
CASE IDOC_DATA-SEGNAM.
WHEN 'YAXX_THEAD'.
PERFORM UNPACK_IDOC TABLES IDOC_DATA USING XTHEAD.
WHEN 'YAXX_TLINE'.
PERFORM UNPACK_TAB TABLES IDOC_DATA TLINES.
ENDCASE.
ENDLOOP.

When the IDoc is unpacked data is passed to the application.
* *** --- Calling the application to process the received data --- ***
EXPORTING
HEADER = XTHEAD
TABLES
LINES = TLINES.

Figure 13: Storing data

Finally the processing routine needs to pass a status record to the IDoc processor.
This status indicates successful or unsuccessful processing and will be added as a
log entry to the table EDIDS.
* fill IDOC_Status
IF OK NE 0.
* IDOC_STATUS-.. = . fill the other fields to log information
ELSE.
ENDIF.
APPEND IDOC_STATUS.

Figure 14: Writing a status log

The status value '51' indicates a general error during application processing and the
status '53' indicates everything is OK.

35

6 IDocs Terminology and Basic Tools
This chapter addresses common expressions used in context with IDocs. You should be
familiar with them. Some are also used in non-IDoc context with a completely different
meaning, e.g. the term message, so avoid misunderstandings. Many fights in project teams
arise from different interpretations of the same expression.

36

6.1 Basic Terms
There are several common expressions and methods that you need to know, when dealing
with IDoc.
Message Type The message type defines the semantic context of an IDoc. The message type tells
the processing routines, how the message has to be interpreted.
The same IDoc data can be sent with different message types. E.g. The same IDoc
structure which is used for a purchase order can also be used for transmitting a sales
order. Imagine the situation that you receive a sales order from your clients and in
addition you receive copies of sales orders sent by an subsidiary of your company.
IDoc Type An IDoc type defines the syntax of the IDoc data. It tells which segments are found
in an Idoc and what fields the segments are made of.
Processing Code The processing code is a logical name that determines the processing routine. This
points usually to a function module, but the processing routine can also be a
workflow or an event.
The use of a logical processing code makes it easy to modify the processing routine
for a series of partner profiles at once.
Partner profile Every sender-receiver relationship needs a profile defined. This one determines
• the processing code
• the processing times and conditions
• and in the case of outbound IDocs
• the media port used to send the IDoc and
• the triggers used to send the IDoc
Partner Type The IDoc partners are classified in logical groups. Up to release 4.5 there were the
following standard partner types defined: LS, KU, LI.
LS - Logical Systems The logical system is meant to be a different computer and was primarily introduced
for use with the ALE functionality. You would use a partner type of LS, when
linking with a different computer system, e.g. a legacy or subsystem.
KU - Customer [ger.: The partner type customer is used in classical EDI transmission to designate a
Kunde] partner, that requires a service from your company or is in the role of a debtor with
respect to your company, e.g. the payer, sold-to-party, ship-to-party.
LI - Supplier [Ger.: The partner type supplier is used in classical EDI transmission to designate a
Lieferant] partner, that delivers a service to your company. This is typically the supplier in a
purchase order. In SD orders you also find LI type partners, e.g. the shipping agent.

37

6.2 Terminology

Message Type – How to Know What the Data Means
Data exchanged by an IDoc via EDI is known as message. Messages of the same kind belong
to the same message type.

Define the semantic The message type defines the semantic context of an IDoc. The message type tells
context the receiverhow the message has to be interpreted.
Messages are The term message is commonly used in communication, be it EDI or
information for a foreign telecommunication. Any stream of data sent to a receiver with well-defined
partner information in itis known as a message. EDIFACT, ANSI/X.12, XML and others
use message the same way.
The term message is Unfortunately, the term message is used in many contexts other than EDI as well.
also used for R/3’s Even R/3 uses the word message for the internal communication between
internal communication applications. While this is totally OK from the abstract point of view of data
between applications modelling, it may sometimes cause confusion if it is unclear whether we are
referring to IDoc messages or internal messages.
The specification of the message type along with the sent IDoc package is especially
important when the physical IDoc type (the data structure of the IDoc file) is used
for different purposes.
A classical ambiguity arises in communication with customs via EDI. They usually
set up a universal file format for an arbitrary kind of declaration, e.g. Intrastat,
Extrastat, Export declarations, monthly reports etc. Depending on the message type,
only applicable fields are filled with valid data. The message type tells the receiver
which fields are of interest at all.

Partner Profiles – How to Know the Format of the Partner
Different partners may speak different languages. While the information remains the same,
different receivers may require completely different file formats and communication protocols.
This information is stored in a partner profile.
Partner profiles are the In a partner profile you will specify the names of the partners which are allowed to
catalogue of active EDI exchange IDocs to your system. For each partner you have to list the message types
connection from and to that the partner may send.
R/3
Partner profiles store the For any such message type, the profile tells the IDoc type, which the partner expects
IDoc type to use for that kind of message.
Outbound customising For outbound processing, the partner profile also sets the media to transport the data
agrees how data is to its receiver, e.g.
electronically exchanged
• an operating system file
• automated FTP
• XML or EDIFACT transmission via a broker/converter
• internet
• direct remote function call
The means of transport depends on the receiving partner, the IDoc type and message
type (context).
Different partners, Therefore, you may choose to send the same data as a file to your vendor and via
different profiles FTP to your remote plant.
Also you may decide to exchange purchase data with a vendor via FTP but send
payment notes to the same vendor in a file.
Inbound customising For inbound processing, the partner profile customizsng will also determine a
determines the processing code, which can handle the received data.
processing routine
The partner profile may tell you the following:

38

Supplier MAK_CO
sends the message SHIPPING_ADVISE
via the port named INTERNET
using IDoc type SHPADV01
processed with code SHIPMENTLEFT

Sales agent LOWSELL
sends the message SALESORDERS
via the port named RFCLINK
using IDoc type ORDERS01
processed with code CUSTOMERORDER

Sales agent SUPERSELL
sends the message SALESORDERS
via the port named RFCLINK
using IDoc type ORDERS01
processed with code AGENTORDER

IDoc Type – The Structure of the IDoc File
The IDoc type is the name of the data structure used to describe the file format of a specific
IDoc.
IDoc type defines the An IDoc is a segmented data file. It has typically several segments. The segments
structure of the segments are usually structured into fields; however, different segments use different fields.

The Idoc type is defined with transaction WE30, the respective segments are defined
with transaction WE31.

Processing Codes
The processing code is a pointer to an algorithm to process an IDoc. It is used to allow more
flexibility in assigning the processing function to an IDoc message.
The logical processing The processing code is a logical name for the algorithm used to process the IDoc.
code determines the The processing code points itself to a method or function, which is capable of
algorithm in R/3 used to processing the IDoc data.
process the IDoc
A processing code can point to an SAP predefined or a self-written business object
or function module as long as they comply with certain interface standards.
Allows changing the The processing codes allow you to easily change the processing algorithm. Because
algorithm easily the process code can be used for more than one partner profile, the algorithm can be
easily changed for every concerned IDoc.
The processing code The IDoc engine will call a function module or a business object which is expected
defines a method or to perform the application processing for the received IDoc data. The function
function to process an module must provide exactly the interface parameters which are needed to call it
IDoc from the IDoc engine.

39

40

7 IDocs Customising
In addition to the writing of the processing function modules, IDoc development requires the
definition of the segment structures and a series of customising settings to control the flow of
the IDoc engine.
Summary
Customise basic installation parameters
Define segment structures
Define message types, processing codes

41

7.1 Basic Customising Settings
Segments define the structure of the records in an IDoc. They are defined with transaction
WE31.
Check first, whether the client you are working with already has a logical system
name assigned.
T000 – name of own The logical system name is stored in table T000 as T000-LOGSYS. This is the table
logical system of installed clients.
TBDLS – list of known If there is no name defined, you need to create a logical system name . This means
logical destinations simply adding a line to table TBDLS. You can edit the table directly or access the
table from transaction SALE.
Naming conventions: The recommended naming convention is
DEVCLNT100
PROCLNT123 sysid + "CLNT" + client
TSTCLNT999
If your system is DEV and client is 100, then the logical system name should be:
DEVCLNT100.
System PRO with client 123 would be PROCLNT123 etc.
SM59 – define physical The logical system also needs to be defined as a target within the R/3 network.
destination and Those definitions are done with transaction SM59 and are usually part of the work
characteristics of a of the R/3 basis team.
logical system

42

Figure 15: Step to customise outbound IDoc processing

43

Figure 16: Elements that influence IDoc processing

44

7.2 Creating an IDoc Segment WE31
The segment defines the structure of the records in an IDoc. They are defined with transaction
WE31. We will define a structure to send a text from the text database.
Define a DDic structure Transaction WE31 calls the IDoc segment editor. The editor defines the fields of a
with WE31 single segment structure. The thus defined IDoc segment is then created as a data
dictionary structure. You can view the created structure with SE11 and use it in an
ABAP as any TABLES declaration.
Example: To demonstrate the use of the IDoc segment editor we will set up an example, which
allows you to send a single text from the text pool (tables STXH and STXL) as an
IDoc. These are the texts that you can see with SO10 or edit from within many
applications.
We will show the steps to define an IDoc segment YAXX_THEAD with the DDic
structure of THEAD.

45

Figure 17: WE31, Defining the IDoc segment

Figure 18: Naming the segment

Figure 19: Selecting a template

Copy the segment To facilitate our work, we will use the "copy-from-template-tool", which reads the
structure from a DDic definition of a DDIC structure and inserts the field and the matching definitions as
object rows in the IDoc editor. You could, of course, define the structure completely
manually, but using the template makes it easier.

46

Figure 20: Now select it really

The tool in release 4.0b lets you use both DDIC structures or another IDoc segment
definition as a template.

47

Figure 21: Created structure

The definition The thus created structure can be edited any time. When saving, it will create a data
autpmatically creates a dictionary structure based on the definition in WE31. The DDIC structure will retain
corresponding DDic the same name. You can view the structure as a table definition with SE11 and use it
structure in an ABAP the same way.

48

7.3 Defining the Message Type (EDMSG)
The message type defines the context under which an IDoc is transferred to its destination. It
allows for using the same IDoc file format for several different applications.
Sales order becomes Imagine the situation of sending a purchase order to a supplier. When the IDoc with
purchase order for the purchase order reaches the supplier, it will be interpreted as a sales order
receiver received from a customer, namely you.
Sales order can be Simultaneously you want to send the IDoc data to the supplier's warehouse to inform
forwarded and remains a it that a purchase order has been issued and is on the way.
sales order
Both IDoc receivers will receive the same IDoc format; however, the IDoc will be
tagged with a different message type. While the IDoc to the supplier will be flagged
as a purchase order (in SAP R/3 standard: message type = ORDERS), the same IDoc
sent to the warehouse should be flagged differently, so that the warehouse can
recognize the order as a mere informational copy and process it differently than a
true purchase order.
Message type plus IDoc The message type together with the IDoc type determine the processing function.
type determine
EDMSG algorithm
processing The message types are stored in table EDMSG.
WEDI Defining the message type can be done from the transaction WEDI

Figure 22: EDMSG: Defining the message type (1)

EDMSG used as check The entry is only a base entry which tells the system that the message type is
table allowed. Other transactions will use that table as a check table to validate the entry.

Figure 23: EDMSG: Defining the message type (2)

49

7.4 Define Valid Combination of Message and IDoc Types
The valid combinations of message type and IDoc type are stored in table EDIMSG.
Used for validation The declaration of valid combinations is done to allow validation, if the system can
handle a certain combination.

Figure 24: EDIMSG: Define valid combination of message and IDoc types

50

7.5 Assigning a Processing Function (Table EDIFCT )
The combination of message type and IDoc type determine the processing algorithm. This is
usually a function module with a well defined interface or a SAP business object and is set up
in table EDIFCT.
The entry made here points to a function module which will be called when the IDoc
is to be processed.
The entries for message code and message function are usually left blank. They can
be used to derive sub types of messages together with the partner profile used.

Figure 25: Assign a handler function to a message/message type

The definition for inbound and outbound IDocs is analogous. Of course, the function
module will be different.

51

7.6 Processing Codes
R/3 uses the method of logical process codes to detach the IDoc processing and the
processing function module. They assign a logical name to the function instead of specifying
the physical function name.
Logical pointer to a The IDoc functions are often used for a series of message type/IDoc type
processing method combination. It is necessary to replace the processing function by a different one.
E.g. when you make a copy of a standard function to avoid modifying the standard.
Easily replacing the The combination message type/IDoc will determine the logical processing code,
processing method which itself points to a function. If the function changes, only the definition of the
processing codes will be changed and the new function will be immediately
effective for all IDocs associated with the process code.
For inbound processing codes you have to specify the method to use for the
determination of the inbound function.

52

Figure 26: Assign an outbound processing code (Step 1)

Processing with ALE This is the option you would usually choose. It allows processing via the ALE
scenarios.

53

Figure 27: Associate a processing code with a message type

Validate allowed After defining the processing code you have to assign it to one or several logical
message types message types. This declaration is used to validate, if a message can be handled by
the receiving system.

54

7.7 Inbound Processing Code
The inbound processing code is assigned analogously. The processing code is a pointer to a
function module which can handle the inbound request for the specified IDoc and message
type.
The definition of the processing code is identifying the handler routine and assigning
a serious of processing options.
Processing with ALE You need to click "Processing with ALE", if your function can be used via the ALE
engine. This is the option you would usually choose. It allows processing via the
ALE scenarios.

Associate a function module with a process code
Table TBD51 to define if For inbound processing you need to indicate whether the function will be capable of
visible BTCI is allowed dialog processing. This is meant for those functions which process the inbound data
via call transaction. Those functions can be replayed in visible batch input mode to
check why the processing might have failed.

55

Figure 28: Define if the processing can be done in dialog via call transaction

Validate allowed After defining the processing code, you have to assign it to one or several logical
message types message types. This declaration is used to validate, if a message can be handled by
the receiving system.

Figure 29: Associate a processing code with a message type

The examples above show only the association with a function module. You can
also define business objects with transaction SWO1 and define them as a handler. For
those familiar with the object model of R/3, it may be a design decision. In this
book, we will deal with the function modules only.

56

8 IDoc Outbound Triggers
IDocs should be sent out at certain events. Therefore you have to define a trigger. A lot of
consideration is required to determine the correct moment when to send out the IDoc. The IDoc
can be triggered at a certain time or when an event is raised. R/3 uses several completely
different methods to determine the trigger point. There are messages to tell the system that
there is an IDoc waiting for dispatching, there are log files which may be evaluated to see if
IDocs are due to send and there can be a workflow chain triggered, which includes the sending
of the IDoc.

57

Figure 30: General Process logic of IDoc outbound

58

59

8.1 Individual ABAP
The simplest way to create IDocs, is to write an ABAP. The individual ABAP can either be a
triggering ABAP which runs at certain events, e.g. every night, or it can be an ABAP which
does the complete IDoc creation from scratch.
Triggering ABAP A triggering ABAP would simply try to determine which IDocs need sending and
call the appropriate IDoc creation routines.
ABAP creates the whole You may also imagine the ABAP to do all the job. As this is mostly reinventing the
IDoc wheel, it is not really recommended and should be reserved to situation, where the
other solution do not provide an appropriate mean.

60

8.2 NAST Messages Based Outbound IDocs
You can use the R/3 message concept to trigger IDocs the same way as you trigger SAPscript
printing.
One of the key tables in R/3 is the table NAST. This table records reminders written
by applications. Those reminders are called messages.
Applications write Every time when an applications sees the necessity to pass information to a third
messages to NAST, party. a message is written to NAST. A message handler will eventually check the
which will be processed entries in the table and cause an appropriate action.
by a message handler
EDI uses the same The concept of NAST messages has originally been designed for triggering
mechanism as printing SAPscript printing. The very same mechanism is used for IDocs, where the IDoc
processor replaces the print task, as an IDoc is only the paperless form of a printed
document.
Condition technique can The messages are usually be created using the condition technique, a mechanism
mostly be used available to all major R/3 applications.
Printing, EDI and ALE The conditions are set up the same way for any output media. So you may define a
use the same trigger condition for printing a document and then just change the output media from
printer to IDoc/EDI or ALE.

Figure 31: Communicating with message via table NAST

NAST messages are Creating NAST messages is a standard functionality in most of the SAP core
created by application by applications. Those applications - e.g. VA01, ME21 - perform calls to the central
calling function module function module MESSAGING of group V61B. The function module uses
MESSAGING customizing entries, mainly those of the tables T681* to T685*.
NAST contains object A NAST output message is stored as a single record in the table NAST. The record
key, sender and receiver stores all information that is necessary to create an IDoc. This includes mainly an
object key to identify the processed object and application to the message handler
and the sender and receiver information.

61

Programs RSNAST00 The messages are typically processed by
and RSNASTED provide
versatile subroutines for FORM ENTRY in PROGRAM RSNAST00.
NAST processing
If we are dealing with printing or faxing and
FORM EDI_PROCESSING in PROGRAM RSNASTED.

If we are dealing with IDocs
FORM ALE_PROCESSING in PROGRAM RSNASTED.

If we are dealing with ALE.
The following piece of code does principally the same thing as RSNAST00 does and
makes full use of all customizing settings for message handling.
FORM einzelnachricht IN TABLES: NAST.
PROGRAM RSNAST00 SELECT * FROM NAST ...
PERFORM einzelnachricht IN PROGRAM RSNAST00

Programs are The processing routine for the respective media and message is customized in the
customized in table table TNAPR. This table records the name of a FORM routine, which processes the
TNAPR message for the chosen media and the name of an ABAP where this FORM is found.

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8.3 The RSNAST00 ABAP
The ABAP RSNAST00 is the standard ABAP, which is used to collect unprocessed NAST
message and to execute the assigned action.
RSNAST00 is the RSNAST00 can be executed as a collector batch run, that eventually looks for
standard batch collector unprocessed IDocs. The usual way of doing that is to define a batch-run job with
for messages transaction SM37. This job has to be set for periodic processing and start a program
that triggers the IDoc re-sending.
RSNAST00 processes Cave! RSNAST00 will only look for IDocs which are set to NAST-VSZTP = '1' or '2'
only messages of a (Time of processing). VSZPT = '3' or '4' is ignored by RSNAST00.
certain status
For batch execution a Start RSNAST00 in the foreground first and find the parameters that match your
selection variant is required selection criteria. Save them as a VARIANT and then define the periodic
required batch job using the variant.
If RSNAST00 does not meet 100% your needs you can create an own program
similar to RSNAST00. The only requirement for this program are two steps:
* Read the NAST entry to process into structure NAST
tables nast.
data: subrc like sy-subrc.....
select from NAST where .......
* then call FORM einzelnachricht(rsnast00) to process the record
PERFORM einzelnachricht(rsnast00) USING subrc.

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8.4 Sending IDocs Via RSNASTED
Standard R/3 provides you with powerful routines, to trigger, prepare and send out IDocs in a
controlled way. There are only a few rare cases, where you do not want to send IDocs the
standard way.
The ABAP RSNAST00 is the standard routine to send IDocs from entries in the message control. This
program can be called directly, from a batch routine with variant or you can call the FORM
einzelnachricht_screen(RSNAST00) from any other program, while having the structure NAST
correctly filled with all necessary information.
RSNAST00 determines if If there is an entry in table NAST, RSNAST00 looks up the associated processing
it is IDoc or SAPscript routine in table TNAPR. If it is to send an IDoc with standard means, this will
etc.
usually be the routine RSNASTED(EDI_PROCESSING) or
RSNASTED(ALE_PROCESSING) in the case of ALE distribution.
RSNASTED processes RSNASTED itself determines the associated IDoc outbound function module,
IDocs executes it to fill the EDIDx tables and passes the prepared IDoc to the port.
You can call the standard processing routines from any ABAP, by executing the
following call to the routine. You only have to make sure that the structure NAST is
declared with the tables statement in the calling routine and that you fill at least the
key part and the routine (TNAPR) information before.
TABLES NAST.
NAST-MANDT = SY-MANDT.
NAST-KSCHL = 'ZEDIK'.
NAST-KAPPL = 'V1'.
NAST-OBJKY = '0012345678'.
NAST-PARNR = 'D012345678'.
PERFORM einzelnachricht_screen(RSNAST00).

Calling einzelnachricht_screen determines how the message is processed.
If you want to force the IDoc-processing you can call it directly:
TNAPR-PROGN = ''.
TNAPR-ROUTN = 'ENTRY'.
PERFORM edi_processing(RSNASTED).

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8.5 Sending IDocs Via RSNAST00
Here is the principle flow how RSNAST00 processes messages for IDocs.

Figure 32: Process logic of RSNAST00 ABAP

65

8.6 Workflow Based Outbound IDocs
Unfortunately, there are application that do not create messages. This is especially true for
master data applications. However, most applications fire a workflow event during update,
which can easily be used to trigger the IDoc distribution.
SWE_EVENT_CREATE Many SAP R/3 applications issue a call to the function SWE_EVENT_CREATE
during update. This function module ignites a simple workflow event.
Workflow is a call to a Technically a workflow event is a timed call to a function module, which takes the
function module issuing event as the key to process a subsequent action.
Applications with change If an application writes regular change documents (ger.: Änderungsbelege) to the
documents always trigger database, it will issue automatically a workflow event. This event is triggered from
workflow events within the function CHANGEDOCUMENT_CLOSE. The change document
workflow event is always triggered, independent of the case whether a change
document is actually written.
Workflow coupling can In order to make use of the workflow for IDoc processing, you do not have to go
be done by utility through the cumbersome workflow design procedure as it is described in the
functions workflow documentation. For the mentioned purpose, you can register the workflow
handler from the menu, which says Event Coupling from the BALD transaction.
Workflow cannot easily Triggering the IDoc from a workflow event has a disadvantage: if the IDoc has to be
be restarted repeated for some reason, the event cannot be repeated easily. This is due to the
nature of a workflow event, which is triggered usually from a precedent action.
Therefore you have to find an own way how to make sure that the IDoc is actually
generated, even in the case of an error. Practically this is not a very big problem for
IDocs. In most cases the creation of the IDoc will always take place. If there is a
problem, then the IDoc would be stored in the IDoc base with a respective status. It
will shown in transaction WE05 and can be resend from there.

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8.7 Workflow Event From Change Document
Instead of waiting for a polling job to create IDocs, they can also be created immediately after a
transaction finishes. This can be done by assigning an action to an workflow event.
Workflow events are Most application fire a workflow event from the update routine by calling the
usually fired from an function
update routine
FUNCTION swe_event_create

SWLD lets install and log You can check if an application fires events by activating the event log from
workflows transaction SWLD. Calling and saving a transaction will write the event’s name and
circumstances into the log file.
If an application does not fire workflow events directly, there is still another chance
that a workflow may be used without touching the R/3 original programs.
Workflow Events are also Every application that writes change documents triggers a workflow event from
fired from change within the function module CHANGEDOCUMENT_CLOSE, which is called form the
document update processing upon writing the change document. This will call the workflow
processor
FUNCTION swe_event_create_changedocument

Both workflow types are not compatible with each other with respect to the function
modules used to handle the event.
The workflow types are Both will call a function module whose name they find in the workflow linkage
incompatible but work tables. swe_event_create will look in table SWETYPECOU while
according the same swe_event_create_changedocument would look in SWECDOBJ for the name of the
principal function module.
The workflow handler will If a name is found, the function module will then be called dynamically. This is all
be called dynamically to say about the linkage of the workflow.
The dynamic call looks like the following.
CALL FUNCTION swecdobj-objtypefb
EXPORTING
changedocument_header = changedocument_header
objecttype = swecdobj-objtype
IMPORTING
TABLES
changedocument_position = changedocument_position.

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8.8 ALE Change Pointers
Applications which write change documents will also try to write change pointers for ALE
operations. These are log entries to remember all modified data records relevant for ALE.
Most applications write change documents. These are primarily log entries in the
tables CDHDR and CDPOS.
Change docs remember Change documents remember the modified fields made to the database by an
changes in transaction application. They also remember the user name and the time when the modification
took place.
Data elements are The decision whether a field modification is relevant for a change document is
marked to be relevant for triggered by a flag of the modified field’s data element. You can set the flag with
change documents SE11 by modifying the data element.
ALE may need other For the purpose of distributing data via ALE to other systems, you may want to
triggers choose other fields, which shall be regarded relevant for triggering a distribution.
Therefore R/3 introduced the concept of change pointers, which are nothing else
than a second log file specially designed for writing the change pointers which are
meant to trigger IDoc distribution via ALE.
Change pointers So the change pointers will remember the key of the document every time when a
remember key of the relevant field has changed.
document
An ABAP creates the Change pointers are then evaluated by an ABAP which calls the IDoc creation, for
IDocs every modified document found in the change pointers.
Change pointers are The Change pointers are written from the routine CHANGEDOCUMENT_CLOSE
when change documents when saving the generated change document. So change pointers are automatically
have been written written when a relevant document changes.
The following function is called from within CHANGEDOCUMENT_CLOSE in
order to write the change pointers.
CALL FUNCTION 'CHANGE_POINTERS_CREATE'
EXPORTING
change_document_header = cdhdr
TABLES
change_document_position = ins_cdpos.

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8.9 Activation of change pointer update
Change pointers are log entries to table BDCP which are written every time a transaction
modifies certain fields. The change pointers are designed for ALE distribution and written by
the function CHANGE_DOCUMENT_CLOSE.
Change pointers are written for use with ALE. There are ABAPs like RBDMIDOC
which can read the change pointers and trigger an IDoc for ALE distribution.
The change pointers are mainly the same as change documents. They however can
be set up differently, so fields which trigger change documents are not necessarily
the same that cause change pointers to be written.
In order to work with change pointers there are two steps to be performed
• Turn on change pointer update generally
• Decide which message types shall be included for change pointer update
Activate Change Pointer R3 allows to activate or deactivate the change pointer update. For this purpose it
Generally maintains a table TBDA1. The decision whether the change pointer update is active
is done with a
Function Ale_Component_Check

Currently (release 40B) this check does nothing else than to check, if this table has
an entry or not. If there is an entry in TBDA1, the ALE change pointers are generally
active. If this table is empty, change pointers are turned off for everybody and
everything, regardless of the other settings.
The two points read like you had the choice between turning it on generally or
selectively. This is not the case: you always turn them on selectively. The switch to
turn on generally is meant to activate or deactivate the whole mechanism.
reading the change The change pointers which have not been processed yet, can be read with a function
pointers which are not module.
yet processed
Call Function 'CHANGE_POINTERS_READ'

RBDMIDOC The ABAP RBDMIDOC will process all open change pointers and distribute the
matching IDocs.
Use Change Documents When you want to send out an IDoc unconditionally every time a transaction
Instead Of Change updates, you better use the workflow from the change documents.
Pointers

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8.10 Dispatching ALE IDocs for Change Pointers
Change pointers must be processed by an ABAP, e.g. RBDMIDOC.
RBDMIDOC processes The actual distribution of documents from change pointers must be done by an
change pointers and ABAP, which reads the change pointers and processes them. The standard ABAP
sends the IDocs for that is RBDMIDOC. For recurring execution it can be submitted in a scheduled
job using SM35 .
Function module defined It then calls dynamically a function module whose name is stored in table TBDME
in table TBDME for each message type.
Call Function Tbdme-Idocfbname
Exporting
Message_Type = Mestyp
Creation_Date_High = Date
Creation_Time_High = Time
Exceptions
Error_Code_1.

Example A complex example for a function module, which collects the change pointers, can
be examined in:
MASTERIDOC_CREATE_SMD_DEBMAS .
This one reads change pointers for debtors (customer masters). During the
processing, it calls the actual IDoc creating module
MASTERIDOC_CREATE_DEBMAS .
To summarize the change pointer concept
• Change pointers record relevant updates of transaction data
• Change pointers are written separate from the change documents, while at the
same time
• Change pointers are evaluated by a collector run
BDCPS Change pointer: Status
BDCP Change pointer
BDCPV A view with BDCP and BDCPS combined: Change pointer with status
TBDA2 Declare activate message types for change pointers with view V_TBDA2.or
transaction BD50 or .
SALE -> Activate change pointers for message types
TBD62 The view V_TBD62 defines those fields which are relevant for change pointer
creation. The table is evaluated by the CHANGE_DOCUMENT_CLOSE function.
The object is the same used by the change document. To find out the object name,
look for CHANGE_DOCUMENT_CLOSE in the transaction you are inspecting or
see table CDHDR for traces.
Figure 33: Tables involved in change pointers processing

Sample content of view Object
V_TBD62
Table name
Field
DEBI
KNA1
NAME3
DEBI
Kann1
ORT01
DEBI

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Kann1
REGIO
Figure 34: Sample content of view V_TBD62

71

9 IDoc Recipes
This chapter will show you how an IDoc function is principally designed and how R/3
processes the IDocs. I cannot stop repeating, that writing IDoc processing routines is a pretty
simple task. With a number of recipes on hand, you can easily build your own processors.

72

9.1 How the IDoc Engine Works
IDocs are usually created in a four step process: retrieving the data, converting it to IDoc
format, adding a control record, and delivering the IDoc to a port.
Collect data from R/3 This is the single most important task in outbound processing. You have to identify
database the database tables and data dependencies which are needed in the IDoc to be sent.
The smartest way is usually to select the data from the database into an internal table
using SELECT * FROM dbtable INTO itab ... WHERE ...
Wrap data in IDoc format The collected data must be transformed into ASCII data and filled into the
predefined IDoc segment structures. The segment definitions are done with
transaction WE31 and the segments allowed in an IDoc type are set up in transaction
WE30. Segments defined with WE31 are automatically created as SAP DDIC
structures. They can be viewed with SE11, however, they cannot be edited.
Create the IDoc control Every IDoc must be accompanied by a control record which must contain at least
record the Idoc type to identify the syntactical structure of the data and the name and role
of the sender and the receiver. This header information is checked against the
partner definitions for outbound. Only if a matching partner definition exists, can the
IDoc be sent. Partner definitions are set up with transaction WE20.
Send data to port When the partner profile check matches, the IDoc is forwarded to a logical port,
which is also assigned in the partner profile. This port is set up with transaction
WE21 and defines the medium to transport the IDoc, e.g. file or RFC. The RFC
destinations are set up with transaction SM57 and must also be entered in table
TBDLS with an SM31 view. Directories for outbound locations of files are set up
with transaction FILE and directly in WE21. It also allows the use of a function
module which generates file names. Standard functions for that purpose begin like
EDI_FILE*.

73

9.2 How SAP Standard Processes Inbound IDocs
When you receive an IDoc the standard way, the data is stored in the IDoc base and a function
module is called, which decides how to process the received information.
EDID4 - Data Data is stored in table EDID4 (EDID3 up to release 3.xx, EDIDD up to release 2.xx)
EDIDC - Control Record An accompanying control record with important context and administrative
information is stored in table EDIDC.
Event signals readiness After the data is stored in the IDoc base tables, an event is fired to signal that there is
an IDoc waiting for processing. This event is consumed by the IDoc handler, which
decides, whether to process the IDoc immediately, postpone processing, or decline
activity for whatever reason.
EDIFCT - Processing When the IDoc processor thinks it is time to process the IDoc it will search the table
function EDIFCT , where it should find the name of a function module which will be called
to process the IDoc data.
This function module is the heart of all inbound processing. The IDoc processor will
call this routine and pass the IDoc data from EDID4 and the control record from
EDIDC for the respective IDoc.
Function has a fixed Because this routine is called dynamically, it must adhere to a strictconvention All
interface function interface parameters must exactly match the calling convention. For exact
specifications see "Interface Structure of IDoc Processing Functions" later in this
chapter.
EDIDS - Status log The processing steps and their respective status results are stored in table EDIDS.
Status must be logged In addition, the routine has to properly determine the next status of the IDoc in table
properly EDIDS; usually it will be EDIDS-STATU = 53 for OK or 51 for error.

74

9.3 How to Create the IDoc Data
R/3 provides a sophisticated IDoc processing framework. This framework determines a
function module which is responsible for creating or processing the IDoc.
Function module to The kernel of the IDoc processing is always a distinct function module. For the
generate the IDoc outbound processing, the function module creates the IDoc and leaves it in an
internal table, which is passed as an interface parameter.
During inbound processing the function module receives the IDoc via an interface
parameter table. It would interpret the IDoc data and typically update the database
either directly or via a call transaction.
Function are called The function modules are called dynamically from a standard routine. Therefore, the
dynamically function must adhere to a well-defined interface.
Function group EDIN You may want to investigate the function group EDIN, which contains a number of
with useful routines IDoc handler routines and would call the customised function.
Copy and modify existing The easiest way to start the development of an outbound IDoc function module is to
routines copy an existing one. There are many samples in the standard R/3 repository'; most
are named IDOC_OUTBOUND* or IDOC_OUTPUT*
Outbound sample FUNCTION IDOC_OUTPUT_ORDERS01
functions are named like
IDOC_OUTPUT*

Inbound sample FUNCTION IDOC_INPUT_ORDERS01
IDOC_INPUT*

Outbound sample FUNCTION MASTERIDOC_CREATE_MATMAS
functions for master data
are named like
MASTERIDOC_INPUT*

Figure 35: Schematic of an IDoc outbound process

75

9.4 Interface Structure of IDoc Processing Functions
To use the standard IDoc processing mechanism, the processing function module must have
certain interface parameters because the function is called dynamically from a standard
routine.
The automated IDoc processor will call your function module from within the
program RSNASTED, usually either from the FORM ALE_PROCESSING or
EDI_PROCESSING.
In order to be compatible with this automated call, the interface of the function
module must be compliant.
FUNCTION Z_IDOC_OUTBOUND_SAMPLE.
*" IMPORTING
*" VALUE(FL_TEST) LIKE RS38L-OPTIONAL DEFAULT 'X'
*" VALUE(FL_COMMIT) LIKE RS38L-OPTIONAL DEFAULT SPACE
*" EXPORTING
*" VALUE(F_IDOC_HEADER) LIKE EDIDC STRUCTURE EDIDC
*" TABLES
*" T_IDOC_CONTRL STRUCTURE EDIDC
*" T_IDOC_DATA STRUCTURE EDIDD
*" CHANGING
*" VALUE(CONTROL_RECORD_IN) LIKE EDIDC STRUCTURE EDIDC
*" VALUE(OBJECT) LIKE NAST STRUCTURE NAST
*" EXCEPTIONS
*" ERROR_IN_IDOC_CONTROL
*" ERROR_WRITING_IDOC_STATUS
*" ERROR_IN_IDOC_DATA
*" SENDING_LOGICAL_SYSTEM_UNKNOWN
*" UNKNOWN_ERROR

Figure 36: Interface structure of an NAST compatible function module

Inbound functions are also called via a standard mechanism.
FUNCTION IDOC_INPUT_SOMETHING.
*" IMPORTING
*" EXPORTING
*" TABLES

Figure 37: Interface structure of an IDoc inbound function

76

9.5 Recipe to Develop an Outbound IDoc Function
This is an individual coding part where you need to retrieve the information from the database
and prepare it in the form the recipient of the IDoc will expect the data.
Read data to send The first step is reading the data from the database, the one you want to send.
FUNCTION Y_AXX_COOKBOOK_TEXT_IDOC_OUTB.
*"----------------------------------------------------------------------
*" IMPORTING
*" EXPORTING
*" TABLES
*" EXCEPTIONS
*" FUNCTION_NOT_EXIST
*" VERSION_NOT_FOUND
*"----------------------------------------------------------------------
EXPORTING
ID = ID
LANGUAGE = LANGUAGE
NAME = NAME
OBJECT = OBJECT
TABLES
LINES = LINES.
* now stuff the data into the Idoc record format
PERFORM PACK_LINE TABLES IDOC_DATA USING 'THEAD' E_THEAD.
LOOP AT LINES.
PERFORM PACK_LINE TABLES IDOC_DATA USING 'THEAD' LINES.
ENDLOOP.
ENDFUNCTION.

77

9.6 Converting Data into IDoc Segment Format
The physical format of the IDocs records is always the same. Therefore, the application data
must be converted into a 1000 character string.
Fill the data segments An IDoc is a file with a rigid formal structure. This allows the correspondents to
which make up the IDoc correctly interpret the IDoc information. Were it for data exchange between SAP-
systems only, the IDoc segments could be simply structured like the correspondent
DDIC structure of the tables whose data is sent.
However, IDocs are usually transported to a variety of legacy systems which do not
run SAP. Both correspondents therefore would agree on an IDoc structure which is
known to the sending and the receiving processes.
Transfer the whole IDoc All data needs to be compiled in an internal table with the structure of the standard
to an internal table, SAP table EDIDD. The records for EDIDD are principally made up of a header
having the structure of string describing the segment and a variable length character field (called SDATA)
EDIDD which will contain the actual segment data.
FORM PACK_LINE TABLES IDOC_DATA USING 'THEAD' E_THEAD.
TABLES: THEAD.
MOVE-CORRESPONDING E:THEAD to Z1THEAD.
MOVE ‚Z1THEAD’ TO IDOC_DATA-SEGNAM.
MOVE Z1THEAD TO IDOC_DATA-SDATA.
APPEND IDOC_DATA.
ENDFORM.“

Figure 38: Routine to move the translate to IDoc data

Fill control record Finally, the control record has to be filled with meaningful data, especially telling
the IDoc type and message type.
IF IDOC_CONTRL-SNDPRN IS INITIAL.
SELECT SINGLE * FROM T000 WHERE MANDT EQ SY-MANDT.
MOVE T000-LOGSYS TO IDOC_CONTRL-SNDPRN.
ENDIF.
IDOC_CONTRL-SNDPRT = 'LS'.
* Trans we20 -> Outbound Controls muss entsprechend gesetzt werden.
* 2 = Transfer IDoc immediately
* 4 = Collect IDocs
IDOC_CONTRL-OUTMOD = '2'. "1=imediately, subsystem
CLEAR IDOC_CONTRL.
APPEND IDOC_CONTRL.

Figure 39: Fill the essential information of an IDoc control record

78

10 IDoc Recipes
This chapter will show you how an IDoc function is principally designed and how R/3
processes the IDocs. I cannot stop repeating, that writing IDoc processing routines is a pretty
simple task. With a number of recipes on hand, you can easily build your own processors.

79

10.1 How the IDoc Engine Works
IDocs are usually created in a four step process: retrieving the data, converting it to IDoc
format, adding a control record, and delivering the IDoc to a port.
Collect data from R/3 This is the single most important task in outbound processing. You have to identify
database the database tables and data dependencies which are needed in the IDoc to be sent.
The smartest way is usually to select the data from the database into an internal table
using SELECT * FROM dbtable INTO itab ... WHERE ...
Wrap data in IDoc format The collected data must be transformed into ASCII data and filled into the
predefined IDoc segment structures. The segment definitions are done with
transaction WE31 and the segments allowed in an IDoc type are set up in transaction
WE30. Segments defined with WE31 are automatically created as SAP DDIC
structures. They can be viewed with SE11, however, they cannot be edited.
Create the IDoc control Every IDoc must be accompanied by a control record which must contain at least
record the Idoc type to identify the syntactical structure of the data and the name and role
of the sender and the receiver. This header information is checked against the
partner definitions for outbound. Only if a matching partner definition exists, can the
IDoc be sent. Partner definitions are set up with transaction WE20.
Send data to port When the partner profile check matches, the IDoc is forwarded to a logical port,
which is also assigned in the partner profile. This port is set up with transaction
WE21 and defines the medium to transport the IDoc, e.g. file or RFC. The RFC
destinations are set up with transaction SM57 and must also be entered in table
TBDLS with an SM31 view. Directories for outbound locations of files are set up
with transaction FILE and directly in WE21. It also allows the use of a function
module which generates file names. Standard functions for that purpose begin like
EDI_FILE*.

80

10.2 How SAP Standard Processes Inbound IDocs
When you receive an IDoc the standard way, the data is stored in the IDoc base and a function
module is called, which decides how to process the received information.
EDID4 - Data Data is stored in table EDID4 (EDID3 up to release 3.xx, EDIDD up to release 2.xx)
EDIDC - Control Record An accompanying control record with important context and administrative
information is stored in table EDIDC.
Event signals readiness After the data is stored in the IDoc base tables, an event is fired to signal that there is
an IDoc waiting for processing. This event is consumed by the IDoc handler, which
decides, whether to process the IDoc immediately, postpone processing, or decline
activity for whatever reason.
EDIFCT - Processing When the IDoc processor thinks it is time to process the IDoc it will search the table
function EDIFCT , where it should find the name of a function module which will be called
to process the IDoc data.
This function module is the heart of all inbound processing. The IDoc processor will
call this routine and pass the IDoc data from EDID4 and the control record from
EDIDC for the respective IDoc.
Function has a fixed Because this routine is called dynamically, it must adhere to a strictconvention All
interface function interface parameters must exactly match the calling convention. For exact
specifications see "Interface Structure of IDoc Processing Functions" later in this
chapter.
EDIDS - Status log The processing steps and their respective status results are stored in table EDIDS.
Status must be logged In addition, the routine has to properly determine the next status of the IDoc in table
properly EDIDS; usually it will be EDIDS-STATU = 53 for OK or 51 for error.

81

10.3 How to Create the IDoc Data
R/3 provides a sophisticated IDoc processing framework. This framework determines a
function module which is responsible for creating or processing the IDoc.
Function module to The kernel of the IDoc processing is always a distinct function module. For the
generate the IDoc outbound processing, the function module creates the IDoc and leaves it in an
internal table, which is passed as an interface parameter.
During inbound processing the function module receives the IDoc via an interface
parameter table. It would interpret the IDoc data and typically update the database
either directly or via a call transaction.
Function are called The function modules are called dynamically from a standard routine. Therefore, the
dynamically function must adhere to a well-defined interface.
Function group EDIN You may want to investigate the function group EDIN, which contains a number of
with useful routines IDoc handler routines and would call the customised function.
Copy and modify existing The easiest way to start the development of an outbound IDoc function module is to
routines copy an existing one. There are many samples in the standard R/3 repository'; most
are named IDOC_OUTBOUND* or IDOC_OUTPUT*
Outbound sample FUNCTION IDOC_OUTPUT_ORDERS01
IDOC_OUTPUT*

Inbound sample FUNCTION IDOC_INPUT_ORDERS01
IDOC_INPUT*

Outbound sample FUNCTION MASTERIDOC_CREATE_MATMAS
functions for master data
are named like
MASTERIDOC_INPUT*

Figure 40: Schematic of an IDoc outbound process

82

10.4 Interface Structure of IDoc Processing Functions
To use the standard IDoc processing mechanism, the processing function module must have
certain interface parameters because the function is called dynamically from a standard
routine.
The automated IDoc processor will call your function module from within the
program RSNASTED, usually either from the FORM ALE_PROCESSING or
EDI_PROCESSING.
In order to be compatible with this automated call, the interface of the function
module must be compliant.
FUNCTION Z_IDOC_OUTBOUND_SAMPLE.
*" IMPORTING
*" VALUE(FL_TEST) LIKE RS38L-OPTIONAL DEFAULT 'X'
*" VALUE(FL_COMMIT) LIKE RS38L-OPTIONAL DEFAULT SPACE
*" EXPORTING
*" VALUE(F_IDOC_HEADER) LIKE EDIDC STRUCTURE EDIDC
*" TABLES
*" T_IDOC_CONTRL STRUCTURE EDIDC
*" T_IDOC_DATA STRUCTURE EDIDD
*" CHANGING
*" VALUE(CONTROL_RECORD_IN) LIKE EDIDC STRUCTURE EDIDC
*" VALUE(OBJECT) LIKE NAST STRUCTURE NAST
*" EXCEPTIONS
*" ERROR_IN_IDOC_CONTROL
*" ERROR_WRITING_IDOC_STATUS
*" ERROR_IN_IDOC_DATA
*" SENDING_LOGICAL_SYSTEM_UNKNOWN
*" UNKNOWN_ERROR

Figure 41: Interface structure of an NAST compatible function module

Inbound functions are also called via a standard mechanism.
FUNCTION IDOC_INPUT_SOMETHING.
*" IMPORTING
*" EXPORTING
*" TABLES

Figure 42: Interface structure of an IDoc inbound function

83

10.5 Recipe to Develop an Outbound IDoc Function
This is an individual coding part where you need to retrieve the information from the database
and prepare it in the form the recipient of the IDoc will expect the data.
Read data to send The first step is reading the data from the database, the one you want to send.
FUNCTION Y_AXX_COOKBOOK_TEXT_IDOC_OUTB.
*"----------------------------------------------------------------------
*" IMPORTING
*" EXPORTING
*" TABLES
*" EXCEPTIONS
*" FUNCTION_NOT_EXIST
*" VERSION_NOT_FOUND
*"----------------------------------------------------------------------
EXPORTING
ID = ID
LANGUAGE = LANGUAGE
NAME = NAME
OBJECT = OBJECT
TABLES
LINES = LINES.
* now stuff the data into the Idoc record format
PERFORM PACK_LINE TABLES IDOC_DATA USING 'THEAD' E_THEAD.
LOOP AT LINES.
PERFORM PACK_LINE TABLES IDOC_DATA USING 'THEAD' LINES.
ENDLOOP.
ENDFUNCTION.

84

10.6 Converting Data into IDoc Segment Format
The physical format of the IDocs records is always the same. Therefore, the application data
must be converted into a 1000 character string.
Fill the data segments An IDoc is a file with a rigid formal structure. This allows the correspondents to
which make up the IDoc correctly interpret the IDoc information. Were it for data exchange between SAP-
systems only, the IDoc segments could be simply structured like the correspondent
DDIC structure of the tables whose data is sent.
However, IDocs are usually transported to a variety of legacy systems which do not
run SAP. Both correspondents therefore would agree on an IDoc structure which is
known to the sending and the receiving processes.
Transfer the whole IDoc All data needs to be compiled in an internal table with the structure of the standard
to an internal table, SAP table EDIDD. The records for EDIDD are principally made up of a header
having the structure of string describing the segment and a variable length character field (called SDATA)
EDIDD which will contain the actual segment data.
FORM PACK_LINE TABLES IDOC_DATA USING 'THEAD' E_THEAD.
TABLES: THEAD.
MOVE-CORRESPONDING E:THEAD to Z1THEAD.
MOVE ‚Z1THEAD’ TO IDOC_DATA-SEGNAM.
MOVE Z1THEAD TO IDOC_DATA-SDATA.
APPEND IDOC_DATA.
ENDFORM.“

Figure 43: Routine to move the translate to IDoc data

Fill control record Finally, the control record has to be filled with meaningful data, especially telling
the IDoc type and message type.
IF IDOC_CONTRL-SNDPRN IS INITIAL.
SELECT SINGLE * FROM T000 WHERE MANDT EQ SY-MANDT.
MOVE T000-LOGSYS TO IDOC_CONTRL-SNDPRN.
ENDIF.
IDOC_CONTRL-SNDPRT = 'LS'.
* Trans we20 -> Outbound Controls muss entsprechend gesetzt werden.
* 2 = Transfer IDoc immediately
* 4 = Collect IDocs
IDOC_CONTRL-OUTMOD = '2'. "1=imediately, subsystem
CLEAR IDOC_CONTRL.
APPEND IDOC_CONTRL.

Figure 44: Fill the essential information of an IDoc control record

85

11 Partner Profiles and Ports
R/3 defines partner profiles for every EDI partner. The profiles are used to declare the
communication channels, schedule, and conditions of processing.
Summary
Partner profiles declare the communication medium to be used with a partner.
Ports define the physical characteristics of a communication channel.
If you define an ALE scenario for your IDoc partners, you can use the ALE automated partner profile
generation ( → ALE ).

86

11.1 IDoc Type and Message Type
An IDoc file requires a minimum of accompanying information to give sense to it. These are the
message type and the IDoc type. While the IDoc type tells you about the fields and segments of
the IDoc file, the message type flags the context under which the IDoc was sent.
IDoc type signals A receiver of an IDoc must know the exact syntactical structure of the data package
syntactical structure received. Naturally, the receiver only sees a text file with lines of characters. In
order to interpret it, it is necessary to know which segment types the file may
contain and how a segment is structured into fields. SAP sends the name of the IDoc
type in the communication header.
IDoc type (WE30) The IDoc type describes the file structure. The IDoc type is defined and viewable
with transaction WE30.
Examples: Examples of IDoc types are MATMAS01, ORDERS01, COND_A01 or CLSMAS01.
Message type signals the The message type is an identifier that tags the IDoc to tell the receiver how the IDoc
semantic context is meant to be interpreted. It is therefore the tag for the semantic content of the IDoc.
Examples Examples of message types are MATMAS, ORDERS, COND_A or CLSMAS.
For any combination of The combination of IDoc type and message type gives the IDoc the full meaning.
message type and Theoretically, you could define only a single IDoc type for every IDoc you send.
receiving partner, a Then, all IDocs would have the same segments and the segments would always have
profile is maintained the same field structure. According to the context some of the record fields are
filled; others are simply void. Many antiquated interfaces are still working that way.
Typical combinations of IDoc and message types are the following:
Message Type IDoc Type
Sales order, older format ORDERS ORDERS01
Sales order, newer format ORDERS ORDERS02
Purchase Requisition PURREQ ORDERS01

The example shows you that sales orders can be exchanged in different file formats.
There may be some customers who accept the latest IDoc format ORDERS02, while
others still insist on receiving the old format ORDERS01.
The IDoc format for sales orders would also be used to transfer a purchase
requisition. While the format remains the same, the different message type signals
that it is not an actual order but a request.

87

11.2 Partner Profiles
Partner profiles play an important role in EDI communications. They are parameter files which
store the EDI partner dependent information.
Partner profiles define When data is exchanged between partners, it is important that sender and receiver
the type of data and agree on the exact syntax and semantics of the data to be exchanged. This
communication paths of agreement is called a partner profile and tells the receiver the structure of the sent
data to be exchanged file and how its content is to be interpreted.
between partner
The following information is defined with the partner profile.
For any combination of • IDoc type and message type as key identifier of the
message type and partner profile
receiving partner, a • Names of sender and receiver to exchange the IDoc
profile is maintained
information for the respective IDoc and message
type
• Logical port name via which the sender and receiver, resp. will communicate
The communication If you exchange e.g. sales orders with partners, you may do this via different media
media is assigned by the with different customers. There may be one customer to communicate with you via
profile TCP/IP (the Internet) while the other still insists on receiving diskette files.
Profiles cannot be They must be defined for every R/3 client individually. They cannot be transported
transported using the R/3 transport management system. This is because the profile contains the
name of the sending system, which is naturally different for consolidation and
production systems.
Profiles define the The profiles allow you to open and close EDI connection with individual partners
allowed EDI connections and specify in detail which IDocs are to be exchanged via the interface.
Profiles can also used to The profile is also the place to lock permanently or temporarily an IDoc
block an EDI communication with an EDI partner. So you shut the gate for external
communication communication with the profile.

88

11.3 Defining the partner profile ( WE20 )
The transaction WE20 is used to set up the partner profile.
WE20 The profiles are defined with transaction WE20, which is also found in the EDI
master menu WEDI. From there you need to specify partner and partner type and
whether you define a profile for inbound or outbound. Additionally, you may assign
the profile to a NAST message type.
Partner type, e.g. The partner type defines from which master data set the partner number originates.
LI=Supplier The partner types are the ones which are used in the standard applications for SD,
CU=Customer MM or FI. The most important types for EDI are LI (=Lieferant, supplier), CU
LS=Logical system (Customer) or LS (Logical system). The logical system is of special interest when
you exchange data with computer subsystems via ALE or other RFC means.
Inbound and outbound For every partner and every direction of communication, whether you receive or
definitions send IDocs, a different profile is maintained. The inbound profile defines the
processing routine. The outbound profile defines mainly the target, where to send
the data .
Link message type to If you send IDocs out of an application’s messaging, i.e. a communication via the
outbound profile NAST table, then you have to link the message type with an IDoc profile. This is
also done in transaction WE20.
Inbound profiles The processing code is a logical name for the processing function module or object
determine the processing method. The processing code is used to uniquely determine a function module that
logic will process the received IDoc data. The inbound profile will point to a processing
code.

89

11.4 Data Ports ( WE21 )
IDoc data can be sent and received through a multitude of different media. In order to decouple
the definition of the media characteristics from the application using it, the media is accessed
via ports.
A port is a logical name A port is a logical name for an input/output device. A program talks to a port which
to access a physical is presented to it with a common standard interface. The port takes care of the
input/output device translation between the standard interface format and the device dependent format.
Communication media is Instead of defining the communication path directly in the partner profile, a port
defined via a port number is assigned. The port number then designates the actual medium. This
definition allows you to define the characteristics of a port individually and use that port in
multiple profiles. Changes in the port will then reflect automatically to all profiles
without touching them.
Typical ports for data exchange :
Communication media • Disk file with a fixed name
• Disk file with dynamic names
• Disk file with trigger of a batch routine
• Standard RFC connection via TCP/IP
• A network channel
• TCP/IP FTP destination (The Internet)
• Call to a individual program e.g. EDI converter
Every program should Every application should send or receive its data via the logical ports only. This
communicate with other allows you to easily change the hardware and software used to make the physical
computers via the ports I/O connection without interfering with the program itself.
only
The transactions used to define the ports are
WE21 defines the port; • WE21 to create the port and assign a logical
SM59 sets up media name, and
• SM59 to define the physical characteristics of the I/O device used.
There are different port versions for the respective R/3 releases as shown in the
matrix below:
Port types
Port Type DDic Format Release
1 not used not used
2 EDID3 2.x, 3.x
3 EDID4 4.x
Figure 45: R/3 port types by release

Port versions differ in The difference between the port types is mainly the length of some fields. E.g. does
length of fields port type 3 allow segment names up to 30 characters in length, while port type 3 is
constrained to a maximum segment name of 8 characters.

90

12 RFC Remote Function Call
A remote function call RFC enables a computer to execute a program an a different computer
within the same LAN, WAN or Internet network. RFC is a common UNIX feature, which is found
also in other object-oriented operating systems. R/3 provides special DLLs for WINDOWS, NT
and UNIX to allow RFC calls from and to R/3.
Summary
RFC can link two systems together.
RFC function modules are like standard function with only a few limitations.
RFC can also call program on a non R/3 system.
There's a story about some frogs that teaches us all a valuable lesson about life.
The story goes like this :
A group of frogs were travelling through the woods. Two of them fell into a deep pit.
All the other frogs gathered around the pit. When they saw how deep the pit was they told
the two frogs that they were as good as dead. The two frogs ignored the comments and tried
to jump up out of the pit with all of their might. The other frogs kept telling them to stop,
saying that they were as good as dead. Finally, one of the frogs took heed of what the other
frogs were saying and gave up. He fell down and died.
The other frog continued to jump as hard as he could. Once again, the crowd of frogs
yelled at him to stop the pain and just die. He jumped even harder and finally made it out.
When he got out, the other frogs said, "Did not you hear us?" The frog explained to them that
he was deaf. He thought they were encouraging him the entire time.
This story teaches us two lessons. There is power of life and death in the tongue. An
encouraging word to someone who is down can lift him up and help him make it through
difficult times. A destructive word to someone who is
down, can be what it takes to kill him.
So let's be careful what we say. Let us speak life to those who cross our path. Words are so
powerful, it's sometimse hard to understand that an encouraging word can go such a long way.
Keeping this in mind, let's always be careful and think about what we have to say.

Received as a SPAM (“send phenomenal amount of mail”) e-mail from unknown

91

12.1 What Is Remote Function Call RFC?
A Remote Function Call enables a computer to execute a program an another computer. The
called program is executed locally on the remote computer using the remote computer’s
environment, CPU and data storage.
RFC allows execute Remote function call is one of the great achievements of TCP/IP networks. Every
subroutines on a remote computer within the network can accept an RFC-call and decides whether it wants to
computer execute the request. Every modern FTP server implementation includes the RFC
calling feature.
Classical networking A classical network server stores the program code in a central location. When the
loads the program to the program is called, the code will be transported via the network to the calling
client computer computer workstation and executed on the calling computer, consuming the caller’s
resources of CPU, memory and disk.
RFC executes the An RFC calls the program on the remote computer. It is just like stepping over to the
program on the server remote computer, typing in the program command line with all parameters and
waiting for the result to be reported back to the calling computer. The calling
computer does not provide any resources other than the parameters specified with
the call.
Here is again what an RFC does.
• It calls the program on a remote computer and specify parameters if and as
necessary.
• The remote computer decides whether to fulfil the request and execute the
program.
• Every manipulation done by the called program is effective in the same way as
if the program had started on the remote system.
• The calling program task waits meanwhile for the called program to terminate.
• When the RFC program terminates, it returns result values if applicable.
• The called program needs not to be present on the calling computer.
• The called program can be run under a completely different operation system,
so you can call a WINDOWS program from UNIX and vice versa.
The internet is a typical A typical RFC example is the internet with a web browser as the RFC client and the
RFC application web server as the RFC server. Executing a server applet e.g. via CGI or a JAVA or
JAVASCRIPT server side applet is actually a remote function call from the web
browser to the HTTP server.
If R/3 is doing RFC calls into another system, then it does exactly what a browser
does when performing a request on the HTTP or FTP server.

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12.2 RFC in R/3
RFC provides interface shims for different operating systems and platforms, which provide the
communication APIs for doing RFC from and to R/3.
SAP R/3 is designed as a multiserver architecture. Therefore, R/3 is equipped with a
communication architecture that allows data exchange and communication between
individual R/3 application and database servers. This communication channel also
enables R/3 to execute programs running on a remotely connected server using RFC
technology.
SAP R/3 provides special routines to enable RFC from and to R/3 for several
operation systems. For NT and WINDOWS the DLLs are delivered with the
SAPGUI
Non SAP R/3 programs can access function modules in R/3, which is done by
calling an SAP provided interface stem. Interfaces exist for UNIX, Windows and
IBM S/390 platforms.
R/3 systems which are tied together via TCP/IP are always RFC capable. One R/3
system can call function modules in a remote RFC system, just as if the function
where part of the own calling system.
A function module can be called via RFC if the function has RFC enabled. This is a
simple flag on the interface screen of the function.
Enabling RFC for a function does not change the function. The only difference
between RFC-enabled and standard functions is that RFC functions have some
restriction: namely, they cannot have untyped parameters.

93

12.3 Teleport Text Documents With RFC
This example demonstrates the use of RFC functions to send data from one SAP system to a
remote destination. The example is a simple demonstration of how to efficiently and quickly
use RFC in your installation.
A text in SAP is an ordinary document, not a customizing or development object.
Therefore, texts are never automatically transported from a development system to a
production system. This example helps to copy text into a remote system.
Step 1: Reading the text The ABAP Z_RFC_COPYTEXT selects texts from the text databases STXH and
documents in the STXL. The ABAP reads the STXH database only to retrieve the names of the text
sending system documents that match the selection screen. The text itself is read using the standard
SAP function module READ_TEXT.
Step 2: Sending the text Then the ABAP calls the function module Y_RFC_SAVE_TEXT remotely in the
and saving it in the destination system. The function runs completely on the other computer. The
destination system function needs not exist in the calling system.
FUNCTION Z_RFC_SAVE_TEXT.
*"----------------------------------------------------------------------
*" IMPORTING
*" VALUE(CLIENT) LIKE SY-MANDT DEFAULT SY-MANDT
*" VALUE(HEADER) LIKE THEAD STRUCTURE THEAD
*" EXPORTING
*" VALUE(NEWHEADER) LIKE THEAD STRUCTURE THEAD
*" TABLES
*" LINES STRUCTURE TLINE
*" EXCEPTIONS
*" ID
*" LANGUAGE
*" NAME
*" OBJECT
*"----------------------------------------------------------------------
EXPORTING
* CLIENT = SY-MANDT
HEADER = HEADER
* INSERT = ' '
SAVEMODE_DIRECT = 'X'
* OWNER_SPECIFIED = ' '
IMPORTING
* FUNCTION =
NEWHEADER = NEWHEADER
TABLES
LINES = LINES.
ENDFUNCTION.

Figure 46: Z_READ_TEXT, a copy of function READ_TEXT with RFC enabled

94

REPORT Z_RFC_COPYTEXT.
TABLES: THEAD, STXH, RSSCE.
SELECT-OPTIONS: TDNAME FOR RSSCE-TDNAME MEMORY ID TNA OBLIGATORY.
SELECT-OPTIONS: TDOBJECT FOR RSSCE-TDOBJECT MEMORY ID TOB.
SELECT-OPTIONS: TDID FOR RSSCE-TDID MEMORY ID TID.
PARAMETERS: RCVSYS LIKE T000-LOGSYS MEMORY ID LOG OBLIGATORY.
DATA: THEADS LIKE STXH OCCURS 0 WITH HEADER LINE.
DATA: TLINES LIKE TLINE OCCURS 0 WITH HEADER LINE.
DATA: XTEST LIKE TEST VALUE 'X'.
START-OF-SELECTION.
************************************************************************
* Get all the matching text modules *
************************************************************************
SELECT * FROM STXH INTO TABLE THEADS
WHERE TDOBJECT IN TDOBJECT
AND TDID IN TDID
AND TDNAME IN TDNAME.
************************************************************************
* Process all found text modules *
************************************************************************
LOOP AT THEADS.
************************************************************************
* Read the text from pool *
************************************************************************
EXPORTING
ID = THEADS-TDID
LANGUAGE = THEADS-TDSPRAS
NAME = THEADS-TDNAME
OBJECT = THEADS-TDOBJECT
IMPORTING
HEADER = THEAD
TABLES
LINES = TLINES
EXCEPTIONS
OTHERS = 8.
************************************************************************
* RFC call to function in partner system that stores the text there *
************************************************************************
CALL FUNCTION 'Z_RFC_SAVE_TEXT'
DESTINATION ’PROCLNT100’
EXPORTING
HEADER = THEAD
TABLES
LINES = TLINES.
EXCEPTIONS
OTHERS = 5.

Figure 47: Program to copy text modules into a remote system via RFC

95

12.4 Calling A Command Line Via RFC ?
R/3 RFC is not limited to communication between R/3 systems. Every computer providing
support for the RFC protocol can be called from R/3 via RFC. SAP provides necessary API
libraries for all operating systems which support R/3 and many major programming languages
e.g. C++, Visual Basic or Delphi.
RFC does not now the Calling a program via RFC on a PC or a UNIX system is very much like calling it in
physics of the remote another R/3 system. Indeed, the calling system will not even be able to recognize
system whether the called program runs on another R/3 or on a PC.
RFC server must be To make a system RFC compliant, you have to run an RFC server program on the
active on remote remote computer. This program has to have a calling interface which is well defined
computer by SAP. In order to create such a server program, SAP delivers an RFC
development kit along with the SAPGUI.
The RFC call to Windows follows the OLE/ACTIVE-X standard, while UNIX is
connected via TCP/IP RFC which is a standard in all TCP-compliant systems.
For most purposes you might be satisfied to execute a command line program and
catch the program result in a table. For that purpose you can use the program
RFCEXEC which comes with the examples of the RFC development kit both for
UNIX and WINDOWS. Search for it in the SAPGUI directory. This program will
call the operating systems command line interpreter along with an arbitrary string
that you may pass as parameter.
RFCEXEC must be In order to call rfcexec, it has to be defined as a TCP/IP destination in SM59. R/3
defined as RFC comes with two destinations predefined which will call rfcexec either on the R/3
destination with SM59 application server SERVER_EXEC or on the front end LOCAL_EXEC. By
specifying another computer name you can redirect the call for RFCEXEC to the
named computer. Of course, the target computer needs to be accessible from the R/3
application server (not from the workstation) and have rfcexec installed.
The object interface of rfcexec supports two methods only, which are called as
remote function call from R/3.
rfc_remote_exec rfc_remote_exec will call RFCEXEC and execute the command interpreter with the
parameter string. No results will be returned besides an eventual error code.
CALL FUNCTION ‘RFC_REMOTE_EXEC’
DESTINATION ‘RFC_EXEC’
EXPORTING COMMAND = ’dir c:sapgui >input’

The example call above would execute the following when run on a DOS system.
command.com /c copy c:config.sys c:temp
rfc_remote_pipe rfc_remote_pipe will call RFCEXEC, execute the command line interpreter with the
parameter string and catch the output into an internal table.
CALL FUNCTION ‘RFC_REMOTE_PIPE’
DESTINATION ‘RFC_EXEC’
EXPORTING COMMAND = ’dir c:sapgui >input’

The example call above would execute the following when run on a DOS system,
command.com /c dir c:sapgui >input
while the file input is caught by rfc_remote_pipe and returned to the calling system.
Process incoming files A common application for the use of rfc_remote_pipe is to automatically check a
file system for newly arrived files and process them. For that purpose, you would
create three directories, e.g. the following.
x:incoming
x:work
x:processed

The statement retrieves the file list with rfc_remote_pipe into an R/3 internal table.
dir x:incoming /b

96

Then the files are move into a working directory.
move x:incomingfile x:work
Finally the files are processed and moved into an archive directory.
move x:work x:processed

97

13 Workflow Technology
There are two faces of workflow in R/3. One is the business oriented workflow design as it is
taught in universities. This is implemented by the SAP Business Workflow™. However, the
workflow is also a tool to link transactions easily. It can be used to easily define execution
chains of transactions or to trigger user actions without the need to modify the SAP standard
code. This can even be achieved without laboriously customising the HR related workflow
settings.
Summary
Workflow event linkage allows the execution of another program when a transaction finishes.
The workflow event linkage mechanism can be easily used without customising the full workflow scenarios.
This way we use the workflow engine to chain the execution of transaction and circumvent the setup of the
SAP Business Workflow™.
There are several independent ways to trigger the workflow event linkage.
Americans work hard because they are optimists.
Germans work hard because they fear the future.

98

13.1 Workflow in R/3 and Its Use for Development
SAP R/3 provides a mechanism, called Workflow that allows conditional and unconditional
triggering of subsequent transactions from another transaction. This allows you to build up
automatic processing sequences without having the need to modify the SAP standard
transactions.
Workflow as business The SAP business workflow was originally designed to model business workflows
method according to scientific theories with the same name Business Workflow. This is
mainly a modelling tool that uses graphical means, e.g.. flow charting to sketch the
flow of events in a system to achieve the required result. SAP allows you to
transcript these event modellings into customizsng entries, which are then executed
by the SAP Workflow mechanism.
Transaction SWO1 The transaction to enter the graphical model, to define the events and objects, and to
develop necessary triggering and processing objects is SWO1 (It is an O not a zero).
SAP approach I will not even try to describe how to design workflows in SAP. I believe that the
unnecessary complex way workflows are realized in SAP is far too complicated and unnecessarily
and formal complex and will fill a separate book.
Workflow events can be Fortunately, the underlying mechanism for workflows is less complex as the formal
used for own overhead. Most major transactions will trigger the workflow via
developments SWE_EVENT_CREATE . This will make a call to a workflow handler routine,
whose name can usually be customised dynamically and implemented as a function
module.

99

13.2 Event Coupling (Event Linkage)
Contrary to what you mostly hear about R/3 workflow, it is relatively easy and mechanical to
define a function module as a consecutive action after another routine raised a workflow
event.For example, this can be used to call the execution of a transaction after another one
has finished.
Every workflow enabled The whole workflow mechanism is based on a very simple principle. Every
transaction will call workflow enabled transaction will call directly or indirectly the function module
SWE_EVENT_CREATE during SWE_EVENT_CREATE update.
SWE_EVENT_CREATE The function module SWE_EVENT_CREATE will then consult a customising table.
will look in a table, e.g. For a simple workflow coupling, the information is found in the table
SWETYPECOU to get SWETYPECOU . The table will tell the name of the subsequent program to call,
the name of the following either a function module or an object method.
action
This way of defining the subsequent action is called type coupling because the
action depends on the object type of the calling event.
The call to the following event is done with a dynamic function call. This requires
that the called function module has a well-defined interface definition. Here you see
the call as it is found in SWE_EVENT_CREATE .
CALL FUNCTION typecou-recgetfb " call receiver_type_get_fb
EXPORTING
objtype = typecou-objtype
objkey = objkey
event = event
generic_rectype = typecou-rectype
IMPORTING
rectype = typecou-rectype
TABLES
event_container = event_container
EXCEPTIONS
OTHERS = 1.

Figure 48: This is the call of the type coupled event in release 40B

Reading the change Call Function 'CHANGE_POINTERS_READ'
pointers which are not
yet processed
RBDMIDOC The ABAP RBDMIDOC will process all open change pointers and distribute the
matching IDocs.

100

13.3 Workflow from Change Documents
Every time a change document is written, a workflow event for the change document object is
triggered. This can be used to chain unconditionally an action from a transaction.
CHANGEDOCUMENT_C The most interesting chaining point for workflow events is the creation of the
LOSE change document. Nearly every transaction writes change documents to the
database. This document is committed to the database with the function module
CHANGEDOCUMENT_CLOSE. This function will also trigger a workflow event.
The workflow handler triggered by an event which is fired from change documents
is defined in table SWECDOBJ . For every change document type, a different event
handler can be assigned. This is usually a function module and the call for it is the
following:
CALL FUNCTION swecdobj-objtypefb
EXPORTING
changedocument_header = changedocument_header
IMPORTING
TABLES
changedocument_position = changedocument_position.

Figure 49: This is the call of the change doc event in release 40B

In addition, change Change pointers are created by calling FUNCTION CHANGEDOCUMENT_CLOSE
pointers for ALE are which writes the usual change documents into table CDHDR and CDPOS. This
written function then calls the routine CHANGE_POINTERS_CREATE, which creates the
change pointers.
CALL FUNCTION 'CHANGE_POINTERS_CREATE'
EXPORTING
change_document_header = cdhdr
TABLES
change_document_position = ins_cdpos.

Figure 50: This is the call of the type coupled event in release 40B

101

13.4 Trigger a Workflow from Messaging
The third common way to trigger a workflow is doing it from messaging.
Define a message for When the R/3 messaging creates a message and processes it immediately, then it
condition technique actually triggers a workflow. You can use this to set up conditional workflow
triggers, by defining a message with the message finding and link the message to a
workflow.
Assign media W or 8 You define the message the usual way for your application as you would do it for
defining a message for SAPscript etc. As a processing media you can assign either
the type W for workflow or 8 for special processing.
The media type W for workflow would require defining an object in the object
repository. We will only show how you can trigger the workflow with a standard
ABAP using the media type 8.
Form routine requires You need to assign a program and a form routine to the message in table TNAPR.
two parameters The form routine you specify needs exactly two USING-parameters as in the
example below.
REPORT ZSNASTWF.
TABLES: NAST.
FORM ENTRY USING RETURN_CODE US_SCREEN.
* Here you go
na call your workflow action
RETURN_CODE = 0.
SY-MSGID = '38'.
SY-MSGNO = '000'.
SY-MSGNO = 'I'.
SY-MSGV1 = 'Workflow called via NAST'.
CALL FUNCTION 'NAST_PROTOCOL_UPDATE'
EXPORTING
MSG_ARBGB = SYST-MSGID
MSG_NR = SYST-MSGNO
MSG_TY = SYST-MSGTY
MSG_V1 = SYST-MSGV1
MSG_V2 = SYST-MSGV2
MSG_V3 = SYST-MSGV3
MSG_V4 = SYST-MSGV4
EXCEPTIONS
OTHERS = 1.
ENDFORM.

NAST must be declared In addition, you need to declare the table NAST with a tables statement public in the
public in the called ABAP where the form routinely resides. When the form is called, the variable NAST
program is filled with the values of the calling NAST message.

102

13.5 Example, How to Create a Sample Workflow Handler
Let us show you a function module which is suitable to serve as a function module and define
the linkage.
Create a function module We want to create a very simple function module that will be triggered upon a
that will be triggered by a workflow event. This function is called from within function
workflow event SWE_EVENT_CREATE. The parameters must comply with the calling standard as
shown below.
CALL FUNCTION typecou-recgetfb
EXPORTING
objtype = typecou-objtype
objkey = objkey
event = event
generic_rectype = typecou-rectype
IMPORTING
rectype = typecou-rectype
TABLES
event_container = event_container
EXCEPTIONS
OTHERS = 1.

Listing 1: Call of the type coupled event in release 40B

Template for workflow Release 40B provides the function module WF_EQUI_CHANGE_AFTER_ASSET
handler which could be used as a template for the interface. So we will copy it and put our
coding in instead..
FUNCTION Z_WORKFLOW_HANDLER.
*" IMPORTING
*" VALUE(OBJKEY) LIKE SWEINSTCOU-OBJKEY
*" VALUE(EVENT) LIKE SWETYPECOU-EVENT
*" VALUE(RECTYPE) LIKE SWETYPECOU-RECTYPE
*" VALUE(OBJTYPE) LIKE SWETYPECOU-OBJTYPE
*" TABLES
*" EVENT_CONTAINER STRUCTURE SWCONT
*" EXCEPTIONS
*" NO_WORKFLOW
RECEIVERS-EXPRESS = ' '.
RECEIVERS-RECEIVER = SY-SUBRC.
APPEND RECEIVERS.
DOCUMENT_DATA-OBJ_DESCR = OBJ_KEY.
CONTENT = OBJ_KEY.
APPEND CONTENT.
CALL FUNCTION 'SO_NEW_DOCUMENT_SEND_API1'
EXPORTING DOCUMENT_DATA = DOCUMENT_DATA
TABLES OBJECT_CONTENT = CONTENT
RECEIVERS = RECEIVERS.
ENDFUNCTION.

Listing 2: A workflow handler that sends an Sap Office mail

Link handler to caller The function can be registered as a handler for an event. This is done with
transaction SWLD.
Event logging If you do not know the object type that will trigger the event, you can use the event
log. You have to activate it from SWLD and then execute the event firing transaction.
When the event has been fired, it will trace it in the event log.

103

Figure 51: Transaction SWLD to define event linkage and see event log

All workflow handlers are called via RFC to a dummy destination
WORKFLOW_LOCAL_000 where 000 is to be replaced by the client number.
Most errors are caused by following reasons:
Hit list of common errors • You forgot to set the RFC flag in the interface
definition of your event handling function module.
• There is a syntax error in your function module (check with generate function
group).
• You mistyped something when defining the coupling.
• The internal workflow destination WORKFLOW_LOCAL_000 is not defined.
SM58 to display what If you think your handler did not execute at all, you can check the list of pending
happened to your event background tasks with transaction SM58. If your event is not there, it has either
never been triggered (so your tables SWETYPEENA and SSWETYPEOBJ may have
the wrong entries) or your event handler executed indeed and probably may have
done something other than you expected. Ergo: your mistake.
Read carefully the help Your event handler function is called IN BACKGROUND TASK. You may want to
for CALL FUNCTION .. read carefully the help on this topic in the SAP help. (help for “call function” from
IN BACKGROUND TASK the editor command line)

104

FUNCTION YAXXWF_MAIL_ON_EVENT.
*“ IMPORTING
*“ VALUE(OBJKEY) LIKE SWEINSTCOU-OBJKEY
*“ VALUE(EVENT) LIKE SWETYPECOU-EVENT
*“ VALUE(RECTYPE) LIKE SWETYPECOU-RECTYPE
*“ VALUE(OBJTYPE) LIKE SWETYPECOU-OBJTYPE
*“ TABLES
*“ EVENT_CONTAINER STRUCTURE SWCONT

• This example sends a mail to the calling user and tells
• about the circumstances when the event was fired.
• Just for fun, it also lists all current enqueue locks
DATA: ENQ LIKE SEQG3 OCCURS 0 WITH HEADER LINE.
DATA: DOC_DATA LIKE SODOCCHGI1.
DATA: MAIL LIKE STANDARD TABLE OF SOLISTI1 WITH HEADER LINE.
DATA: RECLIST LIKE STANDARD TABLE OF SOMLRECI1 WITH HEADER LINE.
MAIL-LINE = ‚Event fired by user: &’.
REPLACE ‚&’ WITH SY-UNAME INTO MAIL-LINE.
APPEND MAIL.
*----------------------------------------------------------------------*
MAIL-LINE = ‚Object Key: &’.
REPLACE ‚&’ WITH OBJKEY INTO MAIL-LINE.
APPEND MAIL.
*----------------------------------------------------------------------*
MAIL-LINE = ‚Event Name: &’.
REPLACE ‚&’ WITH EVENT INTO MAIL-LINE.
APPEND MAIL.
*----------------------------------------------------------------------*
MAIL-LINE = ‚Rectype: &’.
REPLACE ‚&’ WITH RECTYPE INTO MAIL-LINE.
APPEND MAIL.
*----------------------------------------------------------------------*
MAIL-LINE = ‚Object Type: &’.
REPLACE ‚&’ WITH OBJTYPE INTO MAIL-LINE.
APPEND MAIL.
*----------------------------------------------------------------------*
MAIL-LINE = ‚Container contents:’.
APPEND MAIL.
*----------------------------------------------------------------------*
LOOP AT EVENT_CONTAINER.
CONCATENATE EVENT_CONTAINER-ELEMENT EVENT_CONTAINER-VALUE
INTO MAIL-LINE SEPARATED BY SPACE.
APPEND MAIL.
ENDLOOP.
----- write the current enqueues into the message -(for demo)---------
MAIL-LINE = ‚Active enqueue locks when event was triggered:’.
APPEND MAIL.
CALL FUNCTION ‚ENQUEUE_READ’ TABLES ENQ = ENQ.
LOOP AT ENQ.
CONCATENATE ENQ-GNAME ENQ-GARG ENQ-GMODE ENQ-GUSR ENQ-GUSRVB
ENQ-GOBJ ENQ-GCLIENT ENQ-GUNAME ENQ-GTARG ENQ-GTCODE
INTO MAIL-LINE SEPARATED BY ‚/’.
APPEND MAIL.
ENDLOOP.
IF ENQ[] IS INITIAL.
MAIL-LINE = ‚*** NONE ***’.
APPEND MAIL.
ENDIF.
*----------------------------------------------------------------------*

• fill the receiver list
REFRESH RECLIST.
RECLIST-RECEIVER = ‚USERXYZ’.
RECLIST-REC_TYPE = ‚B’.
RECLIST-EXPRESS = ‚ ‚.

• reclist-express = ‚X’. „will pop up a notification on receiver screen

105

APPEND RECLIST.
*----------------------------------------------------------------------*
CLEAR DOC_DATA.
DOC_DATA-OBJ_NAME = ‚WF-EVENT’.
DOC_DATA-OBJ_DESCR = ‚Event triggered by workflow type coupling’.
DOC_DATA-OBJ_SORT = ‚WORKFLOW’.

• doc_data-obj_expdat
• doc_data-sensitivty
• doc_data-obj_prio
• doc_data-no_change
*----------------------------------------------------------------------*
CALL FUNCTION ‚SO_NEW_DOCUMENT_SEND_API1’
EXPORTING
DOCUMENT_DATA = DOC_DATA
* DOCUMENT_TYPE = ‚RAW’
* PUT_IN_OUTBOX = ‚ ‚

• IMPORTING
* SENT_TO_ALL =
* NEW_OBJECT_ID =
TABLES
* OBJECT_HEADER =
OBJECT_CONTENT = MAIL
* OBJECT_PARA =
* OBJECT_PARB =
RECEIVERS = RECLIST
EXCEPTIONS
TOO_MANY_RECEIVERS = 1
DOCUMENT_NOT_SENT = 2
DOCUMENT_TYPE_NOT_EXIST = 3
OPERATION_NO_AUTHORIZATION = 4
PARAMETER_ERROR = 5
X_ERROR = 6
ENQUEUE_ERROR = 7
OTHERS = 8.
*----------------------------------------------------------------------*
ENDFUNCTION.

Listing 3: Send an SAP office mail triggered by a workflow event (full example)

106

14 ALE - Application Link Enabling
ALE is an R/3 technology for distribution of data between independent R/3 installations. ALE is
an application which is built on top of the IDoc engine. It simply adds some structured way to
give R/3 a methodical means to find sender, receiver, and triggering events for distribution
data.
Make Use of ALE for Your Developments
Transfer master data for material, customer, supplier and more to a different client or system with BALE
Copy your settings for the R/3 classification and variant configurator to another system, also in BALE
Copy pricing conditions with ALE from the conditions overview screen (e.g. VV12 )

107

14.1 A Distribution Scenario Based on IDocs
ALE has become very famous in business circles. While it sounds mysterious and like a genial
solution, it is simply a means to automate data exchange between SAP systems. It is mainly
meant to distribute data from one SAP system to the next. ALE is a mere enhancement of SAP-
EDI and SAP-RFC technology.
ALE is an SAP designed Imagine your company has several sister companies in different countries. Each
concept to automatically company uses its own local SAP installation. When one company creates master
distribute and replicate data, e.g., material or customer master, it is very likely that these data should be
data between webbed known to all associates. ALE allows you to immediately trigger an IDoc sent to all
and mutually trusting
associates as soon as the master record is created in one system.
systems
Another common scenario is that a company uses different installations for company
accounting and production and sales. In that case, ALE allows you to copy the
invoices created in SD immediately to the accounting installation.
ALE defines the logic ALE defines a set of database entries which are called the ALE scenario. These
and the triggering events tables contain the information as to which IDocs shall be automatically replicated to
that describe how and one or more connected R/3-compatible data systems.
when IDocs are
ALE is an applicationthe
exchanged between put To be clear: ALE is not a new technology. It is only a handful of customiing settings
upon the
systems IDoc and RFC and background routines that allow timed and triggered distribution of data to and
mechanisms of SAP from SAP or RFC-compliant systems. ALE is thus a mere enhancement of SAP-EDI
and SAP-RFC technology.

108

14.2 Example ALE Distribution Scenario
To better understand, let us model a small example ALE scenario for distribution of master
data between several offices.
Let as assume that we want to distribute three types of master data objects: the
material master, the creditor master, and the debtor master.
Let us assume that we have four offices. This graphic scenario shows the type of
data exchanged between the offices. Any of these offices operates an its own stand
alone R/3 system. Data is exchanged as IDocs which are sent from the sending
office and received from the receiving office.

Figure 52: ALE distribution scenario

Data Object
Sender
Receiver

109

MATMAS
Material Master
R3NYX
New York Office
R3VEN
Venice Office
MATMAS
Material Master
R3NYX
New York Office
R3PAR
Paris Office
MATMAS
Material Master
R3NYX
New York Office
R3LAX
Los Angeles
MATMAS
Material Master
R3PAR
Paris Office
R3VEN
Venice Office
MATMAS
Material Master
R3LAX
Los Angeles
R3VEN
Venice Office
DEBMAS
Debitor Master
R3PAR
Paris Office
R3VEN
Venice Office
DEBMAS
Debitor Master
R3PAR
Paris Office
R3LAX
Los Angeles
CREMAS
Creditor Master
R3NYX
New York Office
R3VEN
Venice Office
CREMAS
Creditor Master
R3PAR
Paris Office
R3VEN
Venice Office
CREMAS
Creditor Master
R3LAX
Los Angeles
R3VEN
Venice Office

Figure 53: Scenario in tabular form

110

14.3 ALE Distribution Scenario
ALE is a simple add-on application based on the IDoc concept of SAP R/3. It consists of a
couple of predefined ABAPs which rely on the customisable distribution scenario. These
scenarios simply define the IDoc types and the pairs of partners which exchange data.
ALE defines the logic and the triggering events which describe how and when IDocs
are exchanged between the systems. If the ALEE engine has determined which data
to distribute, it will call an appropriate routine to create an IDoc. The actual
distribution is then performed by the IDoc layer.
The predefined ALE is, of course, not restricted to the data types which are already predefined in
distribution ABAPs can the BALE transaction. You can write your ALE distribution handlers which should
be used as templates for only comply with some formal standards, e.g., not bypassing the ALE scenarios.
own development
ALE uses IDocs to All ALE distribution uses IDocs to replicate the data to the target system. The ALE
transmit data between applications check with the distribution scenario and do nothing more than call the
systems matching IDoc function module, which is alone responsible for gathering the
requested data and bringing them to the required data port. You need to thoroughly
understand the IDoc concept of SAP beforehand, in order to understand ALE.
The process is extremely simple: Every time a data object, which is mentioned in an
ALE scenario changes, an IDoc is triggered from one of the defined triggering
mechanisms. These are usually an ABAP or a technical workflow event.
ABAPs can be used in Distribution ABAPs are started manually or can be set up as a triggered or timed
batch routine batch job. Sample ABAPs for ALE distribution are those used for master data
distribution in transaction BALE, like the ones behind the transaction BD10, BD12
etc.
Workflow is triggered The workflow for ALE is based on change pointers. Change pointers are entries in a
from change document special database entity, which record the creation or modification of a database
object. These change pointers are very much like the SAP change documents. They
are also written from within a change document, i.e. from the function
CHANGEDOCUMENT_CLOSE. The workflow is also triggered from within this
function.
Relevance for change SAP writes those ALE change pointers to circumvent a major draw back of the
pointers is defined in IMG change documents. Change documents are only written if a value of a table column
changes, if this column is associated with a data element which is marked as
relevant for change documents (see SE11). ALE change pointers use a customised
table which contains the names of those table fields which are relevant for change
pointers.

111

14.4 Useful ALE Transaction Codes
ALE is customised via three main transaction. These are SALE, WEDI and BALE.
This is the core transaction for SALE customizsng. Here you find everything ALE
related which has not already been covered by the other customising transactions.

Figure 54: SALE - ALE Specific Customising

WEDI - IDoc Here you define all the IDoc related parts, which make up most of the work related
Administration to ALE.
Figure 55: WE
DI
me
nu

BALE – Central menu This is a menu
which
combines most
functions
necessary for
ALE
distribution,
especially the
triggering of
manual
distribution of
master data or
variant
configuration
or
classification.

112

Figure 56: BALE menu

BDBG - Automatically Good stuff for power developers. It allows you to generate all IDoc definitions
generate IDocs From A including segments and IDoc types from the DDIC entries for a BAPI definition.
BAPI

113

14.5 ALE Customizing SALE
ALE customising is relatively straightt forward. The only mandatory task is the definition of the
ALE distribution scenario. The other elements did not prove to be very helpful in practical
applications.
SALE All ALE special customiing is done from within the transaction SALE, which links
you to a subset of the SAP IMG.
Distribution scenarios The scenario defines the IDoc types and the pairs of IDoc partners which participate
in the ALE distribution. The distribution scenario is the reference for all ABAPs and
functionality to determine which data is to be replicated and who could be the
receiving candidates. This step is, of course, mandatory.
Change pointers The change pointers can be used to trigger the ALE distribution. This is only
necessary if you really want to use that mechanism. You can, however, send out
IDocs every time an application changes data. This does not require the set-up of the
change pointers.
Filters SAP allows the definition of rules, which allow a filtering of data, before they are
stored in the IDoc base. This allows you to selectively accept or decline individual
IDoc segments.
Conversion ALE allows the definition of conversion rules. These rules allow the transition of
individual field data according mapping tables. Unfortunately, the use of a function
module to convert the data is not realized in the current R/3 release.
Conversion The filter and conversion functionality is only attractive on a first glance. Form
practical experience we can state that they are not really helpful. It takes a long time
to set up the rules, and rules usually are not powerful enough to avoid modifications
in an individual scenario. Conversion rules tend to remain stable, after they have
once been defined. Thus, it is usually easier to call an individual IDoc processing
function module, which performs your desired task more flexibly and easily.

114

14.6 Basic Settings SALE
Basic settings have to be adjusted before you can start working with ALE.

Figure 57: Customising transaction SALE

Logical System Before we start, we need to maintain some logical systems. These are names for the
RFC destinations which are used as communication partners. An entry for the
logical system is created in the table TBDLS.

Figure 58: SM31 - View maintenance TBDLS

Assign logical system to Finally. you will have to assign a logical system to the clients involved in ALE or
a client IDoc distribution. This is done in table T000, which can be edited via SM31 or via
the respective SALE tree element.

Figure 59: SM31 - View maintenance T000

115

14.7 Define the Distribution Model (The "Scenario") BD64
The distribution model (also referred to as ALE-Scenario) is a more or less graphical approach
to define the relationship between the participating senders and receivers.
Model can only be The distribution model is shared among all participating partners. It can, therefore,
maintained by leading only be maintained in one of the systems, which we shall call the leading system.
system Only one system can be the leading system, but you can set the leading system to
any of the partners at any time, even if the scenario is already active.
BD64 This will be the name under which you will address the scenario. It serves as a
container in which you put all the from-to relations.

Figure 60: Create a model view

Suggestion: One You can have many scenarios for eventual different purposes. You may also want to
scenario per put everything in a single scenario. As a rule of thumb, it proved as successful that
administration area you create one scenario per administrator. If you have only one ALE administrator,
there is no use having more than one scenario. If you have several departments with
different requirements, then it might be helpful to create one scenario per
department.

116

Figure 61: Add a message type to the scenario

Figure 62: Model view after adding MATMAS

Figure 63: Add an OOP object method the scenario

Figure 64: Model view after adding customer.changefromdata

Now go on defining The model view displays graphically the from-to relations between logical systems.
partner profiles You now have to generate the partner profiles which are used to identify the
physical means of data transportation between the partners.

117

14.8 Generating Partner Profiles WE20
A very useful utility is the automatic generation of partner profiles out of the ALE scenario.
Even if you do not use ALE in your installation, it could be only helpful to define the EDI
partners as ALE scenario partners and generate the partner profiles.
WE20 If you define the first profile for a partner, you have to create the profile header first.
Click an the blank paper sheet.

Figure 65: Create a partner

The values give here are not really important. The partner class is only a
classification value. You can give an arbitrary name in order to group the type of
partners, e.g. EDI for external ones, ALE for internal ones, and IBM for connection
with IBM OS/390 systems.

118

Figure 66: Specify partner details

Figure 67: Outbound partner profile before generation

Figure 68: Inbound partner profile before generation

Figure 69: Ports defined with SM59

119

Figure 70: Generate partner profiles form SALE menu

Figure 71: Automatically created partner profile

There have been two profiles generated. The one is for MATMAS, which we
explicitly assigned in the distribution scenario. The second one is a mandatory IDoc
type with the name SYNCH ,which is used for RFC control information and
synchronisation. This one is only created if it does not yet exist.

120

Figure 72: Outbound partner profile after generation

Here is a detail view of the parameters generated. The receiver port is the RFC
destination that had been created for TESTTARGET with SM59.
Data goes to table EDP13.

Figure 73: Assigning the port to partner link

121

14.9 Creating IDocs and ALE Interface from BAPI SDBG
There is a very powerful utility which allows you to generate most IDoc and ALE interface
objects directly from a BAPI’s method interface.
BDBG The transaction requires a valid BAPI object and method as it is defined with
SWO1. You will also have to specify a development class and a function to store the
generated IDoc processing function.
Every time BAPI is I will demonstrate the use with the object KNA1 and method
executed, the ALE CHANGEFROMDATA. This object is executed every time when the data of a
distribution is checked customer (table KNA1) is modified, e.g. via transactions XD01 or XD02. This
object will automatically trigger a workflow event after its own execution, which
can be used for the ALE triggering. BDBG will generate an ALE interface with all
Idoc definitions necessary. This ALE introduced can be introduced in a scenario.
Hence, every time the customer data is modified, the data is going to be distributed
as an Idoc according to the ALE scenario setup.

122

Figure 74: Enter the object and the method.

Figure 75: Specify a name for the created message type. The message type will be created in table
EDMSG .

123

Figure 76: Define the names of the processing function modules and the associated IDoc types.

Now you can specify the required IDoc types and the names of the function module
and function group for the processing routines. Note, that the development class
(Entwicklungsklasse) and the function group (Funktionsgruppe) need to be in your
customer name space, i.e. should begin with Y or Z. The values proposed on this
screen are usually inappropriate.
Result report Click on generated objects to see what was generated in detail.

124

Figure 77: Generation protocol

A detailed report is shown. The report is clickable so that you can directly view the
generated objects. The hotspot will appearwhen you move over a clickable object.
The transaction has generated an IDoc type.
The IDoc type is generated with a header section containing the interface values of
the object and a data section with the remaining fields of the object data structure.
The BAPIs interface definition looks like that.
FUNCTION bapi_customer_changefromdata.
*"----------------------------------------------------------------------
*" IMPORTING
*" VALUE(PI_ADDRESS) LIKE BAPIKNA101 STRUCTURE BAPIKNA101
*" VALUE(PI_SALESORG) LIKE BAPIKNA102-SALESORG
*" VALUE(PI_DISTR_CHAN) LIKE BAPIKNA102-DISTR_CHAN OPTIONAL
*" VALUE(PI_DIVISION) LIKE BAPIKNA102-DIVISION OPTIONAL
*" VALUE(CUSTOMERNO) LIKE BAPIKNA103-CUSTOMER
*" EXPORTING
*" VALUE(PE_ADDRESS) LIKE BAPIKNA101 STRUCTURE BAPIKNA101
*" VALUE(RETURN) LIKE BAPIRETURN STRUCTURE BAPIRETURN
*"----------------------------------------------------------------------

Listing 4: Function interface of the BAPI

Generated segment For each of the parameters in the BAPI's interface, the generator created a segment
structure from BAPI for the IDoc type. Some segments are used for IDoc inbound only; others for IDoc
function interface outbound instead. Parameter fields that are not structured will be combined in a
parameter single segment which is placed as first segment of the IDoc type and contains all

125

these fields. This collection segment receives the name of the IDoc type. In our
example, this is the generated segment Z1ZAXX_KNA1_CHANGED.
The segment below has been created as a header level segment and combines all
function module parameters which do not have a structure, i.e. those which are
single fields. For example, . if the BAPI has parameters, a parameter i_material
LIKE mara-matnr, then it will be placed in the control segment. However, if it is
declared i_material STRUCTURE mara, then it will create its own IDoc segment.

Figure 78: Segment Z1ZAXX_KNA1_CHANGED

126

14.10 Defining Filter Rules
ALE allows you to define simple filter and transformation rules. These are table entries which
are processed every time the IDoc is handed over to the port. Depending on the assigned path,
this happens either on inbound or outbound.
SALE Rules are defined with the SALE transaction.

Figure 79: SALE

127

Figure 80: Assigning the conversion rule to an IDoc segment

Figure 81: Tell where the value for a field should come from

128

Figure 82: Define a rule

Figure 83: Assigning the filter to a partner link

129

15 Calling R/3 Via OLE/JavaScript
Using the OLE/Active-X functionality of R/3 you can call R/3 from any object aware language.
Actually it must be able to do DLL calls to the RFC libraries of R/3. SAP R/3 scatters the
documentation for these facilities in several subdirectories of the SAPGUI installation. For
details you have to look for the SAPGUI Automation Server and the SDK (RFC software
development kit).
Summary
R/3 can exchange its IDoc by calling a program that resides on the server
The programs can be written in any language that supports OLE-2/Active-X technology
Programming skills are mainly required on the PC side, e.g. you need to know Delphi, JavaScript or Visual
Basic well

130

15.1 R/3 RFC from MS Office Via Visual Basic
The Microsoft Office suite incorporates with Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) a fully object
oriented language. JavaScript and JAVA are naturally object oriented. Therefore you can easily
connect from JavaScript, JAVA, WORD, EXCEL and all the other VBA compliant software to R/3
via the CORBA compatible object library (in WINDOWS known also DLLs or ACTIVE-X (=OLE/2)
components).
Visual Basic is DCOM Visual Basic is finally designed as an object oriented language compliant to DCOM
compliant standard.
JavaScript or JAVA are JavaScript is a typical object oriented language which is compliant to basic CORBA,
object languages DCOM and other popular object standards.
SAP R/3 provides a set of object libraries, which can be registered with Visual
Basic. The library adds object types to VBA which allow RFC calls to R/3.
DLLs installed with The libraries are installed to the workstation with the SAPGUI installation. They are
SAPGUI technically public linkable objects, in WINDOWS these are DLLs or ACTIVE-X
controls (which are DLLs themselves).
Object library SAP The object library SAP contains among others the object type FUNCTIONS whose
provides a method CALL basic method CALL performs an RFC call to a specified R/3 function module. With
which will call a function the call you can pass object properties which will be interpreted as the interface
module with all interface parameters of the called function module.
parameters
If the RFC call appear not to be working, you should first try out to call one of the
standard R/3 RFC function like RFC_CALL_TRANSACTION_USING (calls a
specified transaction or RFC_GET_TABLE (returns the content of a specified R/3
database table).
SAP R/3 provides a set of object libraries, which can be registered with JavaScript
to allow RFC calls to R/3.
The object library SAP contains among others the object type FUNCTIONS whose
basic method CALL performs an RFC call to a specified R/3 function module.
Try to call standard If the RFC call appears to be not working, you should first try out to call one of the
routines for testing standard R/3 RFC functions like RFC_CALL_TRANSACTION_USING (calls a
specified transaction) or RFC_GET_TABLE (returns the content of a specified R/3
database table).

131

15.2 Call Transaction From Visual Basic for WORD 97
This is a little WORD 97 macro, that demonstrates how R/3 can be called with a mouse click
directly from within WORD 97.
The shown macro calls the function module RFC_CALL_TRANSACTIION_USING .
This function executes a dynamic call transaction using the transaction code
specified as the parameter.
You can call the macro from within word, by attaching it to a pseudo-hyperlink.
This is done by adding a MACROBUTTON field to the WORD text. The
macrobutton statement must call the VBA macro R3CallTransaction and have as the
one and only parameter the name of the requested transaction
MACROBUTTON R3CallTransaction VA02
This will call transaction VA02 when you click on the macrobutton in the text
document. You can replace VA02 with the code of your transaction.
For more information see the Microsoft Office help for MACROBUTTON and
Visual Basic.

132

Calling SAP R/3 from within WORD 97 with a mouse click
Word 97 Macro by Axel Angeli Logos! Informatik GmbH D-68782 Bruehl
From website http://www.logosworld.com
This WORD 97 document contains a Visual Basic Project which allows to call SAP R/3
transaction using the SAP automation GUI. The call is done via the WORD field insertion
MACROBUTTON. You must have the SAP Automation GUI or SAP RFC Development Kit installed on
your workstation to give SAP the required OLE functionality.
Example:
Click to start transaction { MACROBUTTON R3CallTransaction VA02 }
and another call to { MACROBUTTON R3CallTransaction VA02 } .
To show the coding of the MACROBUTTON statement, right-mouse-click on the transaction code
link and choose "Toggle Field Codes".

Listing 5: WORD 97 text with MACROBUTTON field inserted

Dim fns As Object
Dim conn As Object
Dim SAP_logon As Boolean
Sub R3CallTransaction()
' get the TCODE from the WORD text, MACROBUTTON does not allow parameters
tcode = Selection.Text & ActiveDocument.Fields(1).Code
ll = Len("MACROBUTTON R3CallTransaction ") + 3
tcode = Mid$(tcode, ll)
R3CallTransactionExecute (tcode)
End Sub
Sub R3CallTransactionExecute(tcode)
On Error GoTo ErrCallTransaction
R3Logon_If_Necessary
Result = fns.RFC_CALL_TRANSACTION(Exception, tcode:=tcode)
the_exception = Exception
ErrCallTransaction: ' Error Handler General
Debug.Print Err
If Err = 438 Then
MsgBox "Function module not found or RFC disabled"
R3Logoff ' Logoff to release the connection !!!
Exit Sub
Else
MsgBox Err.Description
End If
End Sub
Sub R3Logon_If_Necessary()
If SAP_logon <> 1 Then R3Logon
End Sub
Sub R3Logon()
SAP_logon = False
Set fns = CreateObject("SAP.Functions") ' Create functions object
fns.logfilename = "wdtflog.txt"
fns.loglevel = 1
Set conn = fns.connection
conn.ApplicationServer = "r3"
conn.System = "DEV"
conn.user = "userid"
conn.Client = "001"
conn.Language = "E"
conn.tracelevel = 6
conn.RFCWithDialog = True
If conn.logon(0, False) <> True Then
MsgBox "Cannot logon!."
Exit Sub
Else
SAP_logon = conn.IsConnected
End If
End Sub
Sub R3Logoff()
conn.logoff
SAP_logon = False
End Sub

Visual Basic code with macros to call R/3 from WORD 97

133

15.3 R/3 RFC from JavaScript
JavaScript is a fully object oriented language. Therefore you can easily connect from
JavaScript to R/3 via the CORBA compatible object library (in WINDOWS known also DLLs or
ACTIVE-X (=OLE/2) components).
JavaScript is a typical object oriented language which is compliant to basic CORBA,
DCOM and other popular object standards.
SAP R/3 provides a set of object libraries, which can be registered with JavaScript
to allow RFC calls to R/3.
DLLs installed with The libraries are installed to the workstation with the SAPGUI installation.
SAPGUI
The object library SAP contains among others the object type FUNCTIONS whose
basic method CALL performs an RFC call to a specified R/3 function module.
Try to call standard If the RFC call appears to be not working, you should first try out to call one of the
routines for testing standard R/3 RFC functions like RFC_CALL_TRANSACTION_USING (calls a
specified transaction) or RFC_GET_TABLE (returns the content of a specified R/3
database table).

134

Figure 84: HTML Page with a button to call a transaction via RFC

<script language="JavaScript">
</script>
<body>
<!—Create an HTML button with a JavaScript call attached -->
Call VA02
<input TYPE = "submit"
VALUE = "VA02"
OnClick = "SAPlogon();
SAPcallTransaction("VA02");
SAPlogoff()"
>
</body>

135

Figure 85: JavaScript example to call an R/3 function module via OLE/RFC

136

15.4 R/3 RFC/OLE Troubleshooting
Problems connecting via RFC can usually be solved by reinstalling the full SAPGUI and/or
checking your network connection with R/3.
Reinstall the full SAPGUI If you have problems to connect to R/3 via the RFC DLLs then you should check
your network installation. It would be out of the reach of this publication to detail
the causes and solutions when an RFC connection does not work.
I may say, that in most cases a full install of the SAPGUI on the computer which
runs the calling program will secure a reliable connection, provided that you can
login to R/3 problem-free with this very same SAPGUI installation.
Another trivial but often cause are simple network problems. So impossible it may
appear, you should always go by the book and first check the network connection by
pinging the R/3 system with the PING utility and checking the proper access
authorities.
Check spelling However, if you successfully passed the SAPlogon method, then the problem is
mostly a misspelling of object or method names or an incompatibility of the called
function.
Make certain that the If you are quite sure that you spelled everything right and correct, and still get an
function module in R/3 is error executing the SAP.FUNCTIONS.CALL method then you should investigate
marked as “RFC allowed” the function module in R/3.
Check for syntax errors Generate the function group to see if there is an syntax error
Make sure that the function is tagged as RFC allowed

137

16 Batch Input Recording
The batch input (BTCI) recorder (SHDB) is a precious tool to develop inbound IDocs. It records
any transaction like a macro recorder. From the recording, an ABAP fragment can be created.
This lets you easily create data input programs without coding new transactions.

138

16.1 Recording a Transaction With SHDB
The BTCI recorder lets you record the screen sequences and values entered during a
transaction. It is one of the most precious tools in R/3 since release 3.1. It allows a fruitful
cooperation between programmer and application consultant.
The section below will show you an example of how the transaction SHDB works.
With the recording, you can easily create an ABAP which is able to create BTCI
files.
Record a session with You will be asked for a session name and the name of the transaction to record.
transaction SHDB Then you can enter the data into the transaction as usual.

Figure 86: Starting a new recording with SHDB

Now the transaction is The following screens will show the usual transaction screens. All entries that you
played and all entries make are recorded together with the screen name and eventual cursor positions.
recorded

139

Figure 87: First screen of MB1C (goods entry)

Figure 88: Recorded list screen for goods entry

140

Figure 89: Recorded detail screen for goods entry

From the recorded After you finished the recording, you have the possibility to generate ABAP coding
session, you can from it. This will be a sequence of statements which can generate a batch input
generate an ABAP session, which is an exact replay of the recorded one.
The generated program contains an include BDCRECXX which contains all the
FORM routines referenced.
Put the coding into a To make the recorded code usable for other programs, you should make a function
function module module out of it. Starting with release 4.5A the recorded code provides a feature to
automatically generate such a function module. For earlier releases, we give the
coding of a program which fulfils this task further down.

141

16.2 How to Use the Recorder Efficiently
This routine replaces BDCRECXX to allow executing the program generated by SHDB via a call
transaction instead of generating a BTCI file.
From the recorded The SHDB transaction creates an ABAP from the recording. When you run this
session, you can ABAP, it will generate a BTCI group file, with exactly the same data as in the
generate an ABAP recording.
The recorder is able to generate an ABAP. Releases before 4.5A include a routine
BDCRECXX. This include contains FORM routines which fill the BDCDATA table
and execute the routines BDC_OPEN_GROUP and BDC_CLOSE_GROUP. These
are the routines which create batch input files.
Replace the include with If we modify this FORM routines a little bit, we can make the ABAP replay the
modified FORM routines recording online via a CALL TRANSACTION, which is much more suitable for our
to allow CALL development and testing purposes. If you replace the standard include BDCRECXX
TRANSACTION with the shown one ZZBDCRECXX, you can replay the recording online.
Starting with release 4.5A you can create a function module from the recording.
This function module replaces the recorded constants with parameters and gives you
the option to choose between a batch input file or a direct call transaction.
Scrolling areas with table A remark on screen processing, if there are table controls (scroll areas). If you enter
controls require to modify many lines or try to extend a list, it will be impossible to tell where to place the
the recording and to add cursor. Therefore, most transactions provide a menu option that positions the list in a
a loop. calculable manner. If you choose a new item, most transactions will either pop up a
detail screen or will position the list, so that the next free line is always line 2. If this
feature is not provided in a transaction, it is regarded as a malfunction by SAP and
can be reported to SAPNET/OSS.

142

16.3 Include ZZBDCRECXX to Replace BDCRECXX
This routine replaces BDCRECXX to allow executing the program generated by SHDB via a call
transaction instead of generating a BTCI file.
*----------------------------------------------------------------------*
* INCLUDE ZZBDCRECXX *
*----------------------------------------------------------------------*
FORM OPEN_GROUP.
REFRESH BDCDATA.
ENDFORM.
*---------------------------------------------------------------------*
FORM CLOSE_GROUP.
ENDFORM.
*----------------------------------------------------------------------*
FORM BDC_TRANSACTION USING TCODE.
CALL TRANSACTION TCODE USING BDCDATA MODE 'A' MESSAGES INTO BDCMESS.
ENDFORM.
*---------------------------------------------------------------------*
FORM BDC_TRANSACTION_MODE USING TCODE AMODE.
CALL TRANSACTION TCODE USING BDCDATA UPDATE 'S'
MODE AMODE MESSAGES INTO BDCMESS.
ENDFORM.
*----------------------------------------------------------------------*
FORM BDC_DYNPRO USING PROGRAM DYNPRO.
CLEAR BDCDATA.
BDCDATA-PROGRAM = PROGRAM.
BDCDATA-DYNPRO = DYNPRO.
BDCDATA-DYNBEGIN = 'X'.
APPEND BDCDATA.
ENDFORM.
*----------------------------------------------------------------------*
FORM BDC_FIELD USING FNAM FVAL.
FIELD-SYMBOLS: <FLD>.
ASSIGN (FNAM) TO <FLD>.
CLEAR BDCDATA.
DESCRIBE FIELD FVAL TYPE SY-FTYPE.
CASE SY-FTYPE.
WHEN 'C'.
WRITE FVAL TO BDCDATA-FVAL.
WHEN OTHERS.
CONDENSE FVAL.
WRITE FVAL TO BDCDATA-FVAL LEFT-JUSTIFIED.
ENDCASE.
BDCDATA-FNAM = FNAM.
APPEND BDCDATA.
ENDFORM. " BDC_FIELD
*----------------------------------------------------------------------*
FORM GET_MESSAGES TABLES P_MESSTAB STRUCTURE BDCMSGCOLL.
P_MESSTAB[] = BDCMESS[].
LOOP AT P_MESSTAB.
AT LAST.
READ TABLE P_MESSTAB INDEX SY-TABIX.
MOVE-CORRESPONDING P_MESSTAB TO SYST.
ENDAT.
ENDLOOP.
ENDFORM. " GET_MESSAGES
*----------------------------------------------------------------------*
FORM GET_RESULTS TABLES MESSTAB STRUCTURE BDCMSGCOLL
RETURN_VARIABLES STRUCTURE BDWFRETVAR
CHANGING WORKFLOW_RESULT LIKE BDWF_PARAM-RESULT.
PERFORM GET_MESSAGES TABLES MESSTAB.
DESCRIBE TABLE MESSTAB LINES SY-TFILL.
REFRESH: RETURN_VARIABLES.
CLEAR: WORKFLOW_RESULT, RETURN_VARIABLES.
WORKFLOW_RESULT = 99999.
IF SY-TFILL GT 0.

143

READ TABLE MESSTAB INDEX SY-TFILL.
IF MESSTAB-MSGTYP CA 'S'.
WORKFLOW_RESULT = 0.
RETURN_VARIABLES-DOC_NUMBER = MESSTAB-MSGV1.
APPEND RETURN_VARIABLES.
ENDIF.
ENDIF.
ENDFORM. " GET_RESULTS

Figure 90: Program ZZBDCRECXX (find at http://www.idocs.de)

144

16.4 ZZBRCRECXX_FB_GEN: Generate a Function from Recording
The shown routine ZZBDCRECXX_FB_GEN replaces BDCRECXX in a recorded ABAP. Upon
executing, it will generate a function module from the recording with all variables as
parameters.
The ABAP generated by SHDB is a very useful tool for developers. However, it
does not replace the recorded constants by variables.
The following routine generates a function module from the recording. All you have
to do is put the coding below in an include.
ZZBDCRECXX_FBGEN Give it the name ZZBDCRECXX_FBGEN.
Replace BDCRECXX Then replace the include BDCRECXX in the recording with
ZZBDCRECXX_FBGEN.
Execute the ABAP once When you execute the ABAP, a function module in an existing function group will
be created. The created function will contain the recording with all the constants
replaced by variables, which show in the function module interface.
The following useful routine is written for releases up to 4.0B. In release 4.5B a
similar functionality is provided. You can generate a function module from the
recording transaction directly.
Before you generate the function, a function group must exist. This you have to do
manually. The function group must also contain the include ZZBDCRECXX shown
before, to have the declarations of the referenced FORM routines.

145

*----------------------------------------------------------------------*
PARAMETERS: FUNCNAME LIKE RS38L-NAME DEFAULT 'Z_TESTING_BTCI_$1'.
PARAMETERS: FUGR LIKE RS38L-AREA DEFAULT 'Z_BTCI_TESTING'.
*----------------------------------------------------------------------*
DATA: TABAP LIKE ABAPTEXT OCCURS 0 WITH HEADER LINE.
DATA: BEGIN OF XCONST OCCURS 0,
NAM LIKE DD03L-FIELDNAME, FREF LIKE DD03L-FIELDNAME,
FVAL LIKE BDCDATA-FVAL, FIDX(6),
END OF XCONST.
DATA: STRL1 LIKE SY-FDPOS.
DATA: STRL2 LIKE STRL1.
DATA: IMPORT_PARAMETER LIKE RSIMP OCCURS 0 WITH HEADER LINE.
DATA: EXPORT_PARAMETER LIKE RSEXP OCCURS 0 WITH HEADER LINE.
DATA: TABLES_PARAMETER LIKE RSTBL OCCURS 0 WITH HEADER LINE.
DATA: CHANGING_PARAMETER LIKE RSCHA OCCURS 0 WITH HEADER LINE.
DATA: EXCEPTION_LIST LIKE RSEXC OCCURS 0 WITH HEADER LINE.
DATA: PARAMETER_DOCU LIKE RSFDO OCCURS 0 WITH HEADER LINE.
DATA: SHORT_TEXT LIKE TFTIT-STEXT
VALUE 'Generated BTCI for transaction ##'.
DATA: XTCODE LIKE SY-TCODE.
DATA: STR255(255).
TABLES: TLIBG, TFDIR.
*----------------------------------------------------------------------*
FORM OPEN_GROUP.
FORMAT COLOR COL_TOTAL.
WRITE: / 'Trying to generate function ', FUNCNAME.
FORMAT RESET.
ULINE.
SELECT SINGLE * FROM TLIBG WHERE AREA EQ FUGR.
IF SY-SUBRC NE 0.
MESSAGE I000(38) WITH 'Function Pool' FUGR 'does not exit'.
EXIT.
ENDIF.
MOVE 'PERFORM OPEN_GROUP.' TO TABAP.
APPEND TABAP.
*----------------------------------------------------------------------*
XCONST-FNAM = 'INPUT_METHOD'.
XCONST-FREF = 'BDWFAP_PAR-INPUTMETHD'.
XCONST-FVAL = 'A'.
APPEND XCONST.
ENDFORM.
*---------------------------------------------------------------------*
FORM CLOSE_GROUP.
LOOP AT XCONST.
IMPORT_PARAMETER-PARAMETER = XCONST-FNAM.
IMPORT_PARAMETER-DBFIELD = XCONST-FREF.
CONCATENATE '''' XCONST-FVAL '''' INTO
IMPORT_PARAMETER-DEFAULT.
IMPORT_PARAMETER-OPTIONAL = 'X'.
CASE XCONST-FIDX.
WHEN 'E'.
MOVE-CORRESPONDING IMPORT_PARAMETER TO EXPORT_PARAMETER.
APPEND EXPORT_PARAMETER.
WHEN '*'.
WHEN OTHERS.
APPEND IMPORT_PARAMETER.
ENDCASE.
* --make table parameters for obvious loop fields (fields with index)
IF XCONST-FIDX CA ')*'.
MOVE-CORRESPONDING IMPORT_PARAMETER TO TABLES_PARAMETER.
TABLES_PARAMETER-DBSTRUCT = IMPORT_PARAMETER-DBFIELD.
IF XCONST-FIDX NE '*'.
TABLES_PARAMETER-PARAMETER(1) = 'T'.
ENDIF.
IF XCONST-FIDX CA '*'.
APPEND TABLES_PARAMETER.
ENDIF.
FORMAT COLOR COL_POSITIVE.
ENDIF.
WRITE: / XCONST-FNAM COLOR COL_TOTAL, (60) XCONST-FVAL.
ENDLOOP.
* SORT import_parameter BY parameter.
* DELETE ADJACENT DUPLICATES FROM import_parameter COMPARING parameter.
* SORT tables_parameter BY parameter.
* DELETE ADJACENT DUPLICATES FROM tables_parameter COMPARING parameter.
*----------------------------------------------------------------------*
LOOP AT TABAP.

146

WRITE: / TABAP COLOR COL_KEY.
ENDLOOP.
*----------------------------------------------------------------------*
REPLACE '##' WITH XTCODE INTO SHORT_TEXT.
WRITE: / FUNCNAME COLOR COL_NEGATIVE.
WRITE: / SHORT_TEXT.
SELECT SINGLE * FROM TFDIR WHERE FUNCNAME EQ FUNCNAME.
IF SY-SUBRC EQ 0.
MESSAGE I000(38) WITH 'Function' FUNCNAME 'already exists'.
PERFORM SUCCESS_MESSAGE
USING 'Function' FUNCNAME 'already exists' SPACE ' '.
EXIT.
ENDIF.
CALL FUNCTION 'RPY_FUNCTIONMODULE_INSERT'
EXPORTING
FUNCNAME = FUNCNAME
FUNCTION_POOL = FUGR
SHORT_TEXT = SHORT_TEXT
TABLES
IMPORT_PARAMETER = IMPORT_PARAMETER
EXPORT_PARAMETER = EXPORT_PARAMETER
TABLES_PARAMETER = TABLES_PARAMETER
CHANGING_PARAMETER = CHANGING_PARAMETER
EXCEPTION_LIST = EXCEPTION_LIST
PARAMETER_DOCU = PARAMETER_DOCU
SOURCE = TABAP
EXCEPTIONS
OTHERS = 7.
IF SY-SUBRC NE 0.
MESSAGE I000(38) WITH 'Error creating' 'Function ' FUNCNAME.
ENDIF.
ENDFORM.
*----------------------------------------------------------------------*
FORM BDC_TRANSACTION USING TCODE.
APPEND '*' TO TABAP.
MOVE 'PERFORM BDC_TRANSACTION_MODE USING I_TCODE INPUT_METHOD.'
TO TABAP.
APPEND TABAP.
*----------------------------------------------------------------------*
XTCODE = TCODE.
STR255 = FUNCNAME.
REPLACE '$1' WITH XTCODE INTO STR255.
CONDENSE STR255 NO-GAPS.
FUNCNAME = STR255.
*----------------------------------------------------------------------*
XCONST-FNAM = 'I_TCODE'.
XCONST-FREF = 'SYST-TCODE'.
XCONST-FVAL = TCODE.
XCONST-FIDX = SPACE.
INSERT XCONST INDEX 1.
*----------------------------------------------------------------------*
MOVE 'PERFORM GET_RESULTS TABLES TMESSTAB' TO TABAP.
APPEND TABAP.
MOVE ' RETURN_VARIABLES' TO TABAP.
APPEND TABAP.
MOVE ' USING ''1'' ' TO TABAP.
APPEND TABAP.
MOVE ' CHANGING WORKFLOW_RESULT .' TO TABAP.
APPEND TABAP.
MOVE ' READ TABLE RETURN_VARIABLES INDEX 1.' TO TABAP.
APPEND TABAP.
MOVE ' DOC_NUMBER = RETURN_VARIABLES-DOC_NUMBER.' TO TABAP.
APPEND TABAP.
*----------------------------------------------------------------------*
XCONST-FNAM = 'TMESSTAB'.
XCONST-FREF = 'BDCMSGCOLL'.
XCONST-FVAL = SPACE.
XCONST-FIDX = '*'.
*----------------------------------------------------------------------*
XCONST-FNAM = 'RETURN_VARIABLES'.
XCONST-FREF = 'BDWFRETVAR'.
XCONST-FIDX = '*'.
*----------------------------------------------------------------------*
XCONST-FNAM = 'WORKFLOW_RESULT'.

147

XCONST-FREF = 'BDWF_PARAM-RESULT'.
XCONST-FIDX = 'E'.
*----------------------------------------------------------------------*
XCONST-FNAM = 'APPLICATION_VARIABLE'.
XCONST-FREF = 'BDWF_PARAM-APPL_VAR'.
XCONST-FIDX = 'E'.
*----------------------------------------------------------------------*
XCONST-FNAM = 'DOC_NUMBER'.
XCONST-FREF = SPACE.
XCONST-FIDX = 'E'.
ENDFORM.
*----------------------------------------------------------------------*
FORM BDC_DYNPRO USING PROGRAM DYNPRO.
TABAP = '*'.
APPEND TABAP.
CONCATENATE
'PERFORM BDC_DYNPRO USING ''' PROGRAM '''' ' ''' DYNPRO '''.'
INTO TABAP.
APPEND TABAP.
ENDFORM.
*----------------------------------------------------------------------*
FORM BDC_FIELD USING FNAM FVAL.
DATA: XFVAL LIKE BDCDATA-FVAL.
CLEAR XCONST.
CASE FNAM.
WHEN 'BDC_OKCODE' OR 'BDC_CURSOR' OR 'BDC_SUBSCR'.
CONCATENATE '''' FVAL '''' INTO XFVAL.
PERFORM ADD_BDCFIELD USING FNAM XFVAL.
WHEN OTHERS.
SPLIT FNAM AT '(' INTO XCONST-FREF XCONST-FIDX.
CONCATENATE 'I_' FNAM INTO XCONST-FNAM.
TRANSLATE XCONST-FNAM USING '-_(_) '." No dashes allowed
MOVE FVAL TO XCONST-FVAL.
TRANSLATE XCONST-FVAL TO UPPER CASE.
APPEND XCONST.
PERFORM ADD_BDCFIELD USING FNAM XCONST-FNAM.
ENDCASE.
ENDFORM. " BDC_FIELD
*---------------------------------------------------------------------*
FORM ADD_BDCFIELD USING FNAM XFNAM.
CONCATENATE
'PERFORM BDC_FIELD USING ''' FNAM ''' ' INTO TABAP.
STRL1 = STRLEN( TABAP ) + STRLEN( XFNAM ).
IF STRL1 GT 76.
APPEND TABAP.
CLEAR TABAP.
ENDIF.
CONCATENATE TABAP XFNAM '.' INTO TABAP SEPARATED BY SPACE.
APPEND TABAP.
ENDFORM. " add_bdcfield usinf fnam fval.
*----------------------------------------------------------------------*
FORM SUCCESS_MESSAGE USING V1 V2 V3 V4 OK.
CONCATENATE V1 V2 V3 V4 INTO SY-LISEL SEPARATED BY SPACE.
REPLACE '##' WITH FUNCNAME INTO SY-LISEL.
MODIFY LINE 1.
IF OK EQ SPACE.
MODIFY LINE 1 LINE FORMAT COLOR COL_NEGATIVE.
ELSE.
MODIFY LINE 1 LINE FORMAT COLOR COL_POSITIVE.
ENDIF.
ENDFORM. "ccess_message USING v1 v2 v3 v4 ok.

Figure 91: Program ZZBDCRECXX_FBGEN found on http://www.idocs.de

Test the function module The created function module should work without modification for testing at least.
and add eventual loops However, you probably will need to modify it, e.g. by adding a loop for processing
for detail processing. multiple entries in a table control (scroll area).

148

17 EDI and International Standards
With the growing importance of EDI, the fight for international standards heats up. While there
are many business sectors like the automotive industry and book distribution who have used
EDI for a long time and want to continue their investment, there are others who insist on a new
modern standard for everybody.
The battle is still to reach its climax, but I shall estimate that the foray of the W3C for
XML will succeed and make XML the EDI standard of the future.

149

17.1 EDI and International Standards
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) as a tool for paperless inter-company communication and
basic instrument for e-commerce is heavily regulated by several international standards.
Unfortunately, it is true for many areas in the industry that an international standard
does not mean that everybody uses the same conventions.
Manifold standards result Too many organizations play their own game and define standards more or less
in a Babylon compatible with those set by competing organizations.
National organizations The main contenders are the national standards organizations and private companies
versus ANSI/ISO versus the big international organizations ISO and ANSI.
Private companies want The private companies being backed up by their country organizations usually fight
well established for maintaining conventions, which have been often established for many years with
standards satisfaction.
All inclusive standards by The big American National Standards Organisation ANSI and the international
the big ones ANSI and partner International Standards Organization ISO will usually fight for a solid open
ISO standard to cover the requirements of everybody.
Pragmatism beats This generally leads to a more or less foul trade-off between pragmatism and
completeness completeness. Tragically the big organizations put themselves in question. Their
publications are not free of charge. The standards are publications which cost a lot
of money. So they mostly remain unread.
Standards need to be Nowadays computing standards have mostly been published and established by
accessible and published private organizations who made their knowledge accessible free of charge to
free of charge everybody. Examples are manifold like PostScript by Adobe, HTML and JavaScript
by Netscape, Java by SUN, SCSI by APPLE, ZIP by PK Systems or MP3 by – who
cares, XML by W3C and EDIFACT by the United Nations Organization UNESCO.

150

17.2 Characteristics of the Standards
The well-known standards EDIFACT, X.12 and XML have similar characteristics and are
designed like a document description language. Other standards and R/3 IDocs are based on
segmented files.
ANSI X.12 ANSI X.12 is the US standard for EDI and e-commerce. Why is it still the
standard? There are chances that X.12 will be soon replaced by the more flexible
XML, especially with the upcoming boost of e-commerce. ANSI X.12 is a
document description language.
An ANSI X.12 message is made up of segments with fields. The segments have a
segment identifier and the fields are separated by a special separator character, e.g.
an asterisk.
BEG*00*NE*123456789**991125**AC~

EDIFACT/UN EDIFACT was originally a European standard. It became popular when chosen by
the UNO for their EDI transactions. EDIFACT is a document description language.
EDIFACT is very similar to ANSI X.12 and differs merely in syntactical details and
the meaning of tags.
XML XML and the internet page description language HTML are both subsets derived
from the super standard SGML...
The patent and trademark holder of XML (W3C, http://w3c.org) describes the
advantages of XML very precisely as follows.
1. XML is a method for putting structured data in a text file.
2. XML looks a bit like HTML but isn't HTML.
3. XML is text, but isn't meant to be read.
4. XML is verbose, but that is not a problem.
5. XML is license-free and platform-independent.
And XML is fully integrated in the world wide web. It can be said briefly: XML
sends the form just as the customer entered the data.

151

17.3 XML
This is an excerpt of an XML EDI message. The difference from all other EDI standards is that
the message information is tagged in a way that it can be displayed in human readable form by
a browser.
XML differs from the other standards. It is a document markup language like its
sister and subset HTML.
XML defines additional tags to HTML, which are specially designed to mark up
formatted data information.
The advantage is that the XML message has the same information as an EDIFACT
or X.12 message. In addition, it can be displayed in an XML capable web browser

152

<!DOCTYPE Sales-Order PUBLIC>
<Purchase Order Customer="123456789" Send-to="http://www.idocs.de/order.in">
<title>IDOC.de Order Form</title>
<Order-No>1234567</Order-No>
<Message-Date>19991128</Message-Date>
<Buyer-EAN>12345000</Buyer-EAN>
<Order-Line Reference-No="0121314">
<Quantity>250</Quantity>
</Order-Line>
<input type="checkbox" name="partial" value="allowed"/>
<text>Tick here if a delayed/partial supply of order is acceptable
</text>
<input type="checkbox" name="confirmation" value="requested"/>
<text>Tick here if Confirmation of Acceptance of Order is to be returned by e-mail
</text>
<input type="checkbox" name="DeliveryNote" value="required"/>
<text>Tick here if e-mail Delivery Note is required to confirm details of delivery
</text>
</Book-Order>

Figure 92: XML sales order data

Figure 93: XML Order form as displayed in a browser after interpretation by a JAVA applet

XML plug-ins exist often The example shows an XML sales order. In order to be displayed with a standard
as JAVA applets for browser like Internet Explorer 5, plug-ins and JAVA applets exist that interpret the
standard browsers XML and translate the XML specific data tags into HTML form.

153

17.4 ANSI X.12
This is an example of how an ANSI X.12 EDI message for a sales order looks . The examples do
not show the control record (the “envelope”). EDIFACT looks very much the same.
The example describes a sales order from customer 0111213 for 250 KGM. The
fields of a segment are separated by an asterisk (*).
We start with a header record describing the type of message (850). IDocs would
store this information in the control record.
ST*850*000000101~
ST01
ST02

Transaction 850 = Purchase Order
Set control number 453
Signal begin of transaction and identifies sender
BEG*00*NE*123456789**991125**AC~
BEG01
BEG02
BEG03
BEG04
BEG05
BEG07

00 - Original transaction, not a resend
NE - New Order
PO Number 123456789
VOID
PO Date 25/NOV/1999
Client requests an acknowledgment with details and changes
Bill-to party and Ship-to party
N1*BT***0111213~
N101
N104

Bill to (VBPA-PARVW)
0111213 number of bill-to-party ( VBPA-PARNR)
N1*ST***5566789~
N101
N104

Ship to (VBPA-PARVW)
5566789 (VBPA-PARNR)
The item segments for item 01 – 250 kg of material MY1001 for $15.3 per kg
PO1*1*250*KGM*15.3*SR*EAN*MY1001~
PO101
PO102
PO103
PO104
PO106
PO107

Line item 1 – VBAP-POSNR
Quantity 250 - VBAP-KWMENG

154

Units Kilogram VBAP-MEINS
$15.30 - VBAP-PREIS
EAN – Material number
MY1001 (VBAP-MATNR)
Summary information to verify completeness
CTT*1*2~
CTT01
CTT02

1 PO1 segments
2 some of quantities (ignore unit)
SE*7*000000101~
SE01
SE02

7 segments altogether
Control number 453. This is the same as ST02

155

18 EDI Converter
R/3 does not provide any tool to convert IDocs into international EDI format like ANSI X.12,
EDIFACT or XML. This conversion needs to be done by an external add-on product which is
provided by a variety of companies who specialize in general EDI and e-commerce solutions.
Summary
R/3 does not provide conversion to EDI standard formats like X.12, EDIFACT or XML.
Converters exist on UNIX and PC platforms.
Many converters are simple PC programs.
R/3 certification only guarantees that the converter complies to RFC technology and works fine with standard
IDoc scenarios.
Real life situations require a flexible and easily adaptable converter program.

156

18.1 Converter
SAP R/3 has foregone implementing routines to convert IDocs into international EDI standard
formats and forwards those requests to the numerous third party companies who specialize in
commercial EDI and e-commerce solutions..
Numerous EDI standards Nearly every standard organization defined an own EDI standard for their members.
So there is X.12 by ANSI for the US, EDIFACT/UN adopted by the United Nations
Organization UNO or XML as proposed by the internet research gurus of W3C.
Big companies define But there is still more about it. All major industry companies define an additional
their own standards or file format standard for their EDI partners. Even if they adhere officially to one of
dialects the big standards, they yet issue interpretation guidelines with their own
modifications according to their needs.
If a company does not play in the premier league of industry or banking companies,
it will have to comply with the demands of the large corporations.
A converter needs to be As this leads to the insight that there are as many different EDI formats as
open and flexible companies, it is evident that an EDI converter needs to have at least one major
feature, which is flexibility in the sense of openness towards modification of the
conversion rules.
There are hundreds of converter solutions on the market not counting the individual
in-house programming solutions done by many companies.
EDI is a market on its own. Numerous companies specialize in providing EDI
solutions and services. The majority of those companies also provide converters.
Many of the converters are certified by SAP to be used with R/3. However, this does
not tell anything about the usability or suitability to task of the products.

157

Alphabetic Index
ACTIVE/X, OLE/2 130 Port, Define with WE21 90
ALE - Application Link Enabling 107 processing code 37, 39, 52
ALE Change Pointers 68 processing code, inbound 55
ANSI X.12 151, 154 Processing function, assign 51
Change document 67 RFC, Calling R/3 from JavaScript 134
Change pointer, activation 69 RFC, Calling R/3 from MS Excel 131
Change Pointers, Trigger IDocs via ALE 68 RFC, Calling R/3 with MSWORD 132
Converter 156 RFC, calling the operating system 96
EDI Converter 156 RFC, LOCAL_EXEC 96
EDI Customizing 42 RFC, remote function call 92
EDI Standard, ANSI X.12 151, 154 RFC, troubleshooting 137
EDI Standard, EDIFACT/UN 151 rfc_remote_exec 96
EDI Standard, XML 151, 152 RSNAST00 65
EDIFACT/UN 151 RSNAST00, send NAST messages 63
Engine, IDoc engine 72, 79 RSNASTED, send IDocs from NAST 64
Event linkage, Workflow 100 Sample Inbound Routine 34
IDoc Engine 72, 79 Sample Outbound Routine 32
IDoc Segment, Creating 45 Sample workflow handler 103
IDoc type 39 SAPoffice mail 103
IDoc Type 37 Terminolgy 38
IDoc type, purpose 87 Trigger from change document 67
JavaScript, RFC 134 Trigger IDoc send 57
LOCAL_EXEC, RFC 96 Trigger via ALE Change Pointers 68
logical system 37 Trigger via NAST 61
Logical System 42 Trigger via RSNAST00 63
Mail, send via SAPoffice 103 Trigger via workflow 66
message type 37 Troubleshooting, RFC 137
Message Type 38 Visual Basic, RFC via OLE 131
Message Type, define 49 Visual Basic, RFC with WORD 132
Message type, purpose 87 Workflow 98
NAST 61 Workflow event coupling 100
NAST, RSNAST00 63 Workflow event linkage 100
NAST, send via RSNASTED 64 Workflow from change document 67
OLE, ACTIVE/X 130 Workflow from change documents 101
partner profile 37 Workflow from messaging (NAST) 102
partner profiles 38 Workflow handler, how to 103
Partner Profiles, Define with WE20 88 Workflow, send SAPoffice mail 103
partner type 37 X.12, ANSI 151, 154

158

XML 151, 152

159

Last Page
There is no new knowledge in this world.
And yet you thought to find it in these pages?
Arthur Schnitzler

160

Idoc

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