topic Re: GIS to SAP Integration in ArcGIS Enterprise Questions

GIS to SAP Integration

GaryPeters1 — Wed, 06 May 2015 20:38:46 GMT

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

Re: GIS to SAP Integration

KennethOGuinn — Wed, 06 May 2015 22:50:29 GMT

Hi Gary,

I'm certainly not an expert with regards to SAP, but I know we have a product Esri Maps for SAP Business Objects Would something like this be what you're looking for?

Hope this helps!

Re: GIS to SAP Integration

PaulDavidson1 — Thu, 07 May 2015 19:09:15 GMT

Gary:

I too am not familiar with current Esri/SAP interfaces.

As I recall, this is a pretty new alliance, 2013 UC perhaps?

Esri Partners | SAP | Overview

At my prior job, we built a custom ArcMap tool that picked up selected features and passed them to a custom SAP BAPI via the SAP .NET connector. I believe it then called up the SAP work order module to finish things off.

It was a bit of a PIA truthfully that required some false starts.

The biggest issue was the SAP .NET connector was really old (required VS 2003 I think, in 2010 or so?)

A new connector came out just after we finished the upgrade of the tool from ArcGIS 9.3 to 10.0

I was managing the programmer so my involvement was only skin deep.

These days I would first look for an API from SAP & Esri.

If that failed, then I'd look at doing this in Python as it appears SAP has Python interfaces available in various ways.

RFC, etc... Some folks talk about building a web service that you then consume...

Python / ABAP Stack | SCN

I believe a lot of how you go depends on your SAP implementation.

And of course your ArcServer implementation.

I do think the one thing you do not ever want to do with SAP is directly manipulate your database tables.

You always want to work through the abstracted SAP interfaces.

A behemoth like SAP does not move very quickly but one might think that two years later, you will be able to find tools that simplify a lot of this.

Best of luck.

Re: GIS to SAP Integration

GaryPeters1 — Thu, 07 May 2015 20:28:26 GMT

Thanks for the reply Ken, but what we are looking for is a way to interface data to/from GIS/SAP. I think I need to investigate Paul’s suggestion of APIs on the ESRI and SAP side, and if that research comes up empty the Python route might be the answer.

Thanks again for the reply!

Gary

Re: GIS to SAP Integration

GaryPeters1 — Thu, 07 May 2015 20:39:14 GMT

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

Re: GIS to SAP Integration

PaulDavidson1 — Thu, 07 May 2015 21:13:05 GMT

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

Re: GIS to SAP Integration

larryzhang — Mon, 11 May 2015 05:00:24 GMT

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