SAP connection to extract data from PHP

Question

I need to extract data from SAP ERP for a third-party system. The third-party system has to be able to request remotely data from SAP ERP on demand (i.e. information from a given employee). So the point is to make queries (mainly employees, inventory, stock) for a given resource. Therefore the data to transfer should be small for each request. The system is PHP-based.

My questions are:

a) Best way to carry out this task

b) Do I need to carry some operation or coding within SAP to enable such web service/API?

c) Is it needed to purchase any license?

Answer 1

As we consultants say "it depends" but not knowing more is a possible response. There is no standard way to extract data from SAP (of course you could always go to the SQL server directly though this is frowned upon) You will need to get a SAP developer to write a remote enabled FM that you can expose either as a web service (might be the best option) or for use with an RFC library the web service would extract the specific data you are looking for and makes it available to your application.

As far as license, you would need to ask your company about how you are licensed but there Is no specific license for connecting to SAP to extract data for use in another application.

Hope that gets you started.

Later.....

Answer 2

a) Assuming it's a web application, I would first look into the option of providing a RESTful HTTP API for your web developers to use via javascript. (read: Odata services via SAP Gateway).

b) If you can settle for the standard APIs delivered by SAP, it's "just" a question of enabling the services you want to expose. But you will need SAP knowledge in order to consume the services. If you don't have that, you may be better off with a tailor-made API for your application.

c) Yes.

Any user that benefits from SAP data must be licensed in some way. That includes data that's exported to 3rd party systems. In the licensing terms, it's stated that you should negotiate with SAP for scenarios where you either export data or connect using a service account.