GIS to SAP Integration

Question

Could someone point me in the right direction on what I have to do in order to get our ArcGIS Server to talk to our SAP server.  We do not want to do BOBJ or anything fancy, just interface data from the ArcGIS Server and create equipment/functional location records on SAP.  Once the records are created on SAP we want to turn them around and update the originating GIS records with the equipment/functional location ids as a start.

Any insight/documentation/blogs would be appreciated!

Thanks,

Gary Peters

larryzhang · Answer

As you know, SAP has lots of functions/ products (List of SAP products - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and http://www.sap.com/canada/pc/index.html  ).

Certainly, how to integrate ESRI mapping capabilities with SAP products varies, which fully relies on their business purposes and what kind of applications (web, mobile...) ...

On your description/requirements, please refer to below, which shows your options to integrate ESRI maps /analysis with SAP BusinessObjects in both client-side and server-side...

https://decisionfirst.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/exploring-gis-integration-options-for-sap-businessobjects.pdf

Also, Esri Maps for SAP BusinessObjects | ArcGIS

PaulDavidson1 · Answer

Gary:

You might already be aware of this but:

One thing about the Python route, it will not be wasted effort.

Esri is pushing python heavily, as they should.

There are a slew of online python helps out there.  Most are general python...

But Esri's Python help is quite good, not as a learning tool (except by example) but as a syntax tool.

I always have a help window open to the Python stuff and a quick search usually finds correct syntax, etc...

Also, you can build models (model builder) and then output the code as Python.

It's generally not code you would want to run with but it will give you the syntax and functions/procedures/objects that you want to use.  And sometimes it will run first go.  But it's usually poorly structured.

Finally, a lot of the Toolboxes in ArcMap/Catalog are now built with Python.  I believe the ones with the scroll looking icon are python.  And you can open the source code and have ready made templates.

Best of luck

GaryPeters1 · Answer

Thanks for the suggestions Paul.  If I am unable to find any suitable ESRI/SAP APIs or consumable web services, I will pursue the Python path.  Worst thing would be spending some dollars on a Python book, but this might be the best answer in the short term.

Thanks again for your insight!

Gary