Using the SAP BAPI Connector

Birst Connect supports an SAP BAPI Connector. A BAPI is a standardized business API that enables vendor systems to interact with SAP systems. A BAPI is implemented as an RFC-enabled function, so the adapter's BAPI interface can support any such function. The BAPI interface APIs enable vendor systems to interact with SAP.

For an overview of the different methods you can use to extract SAP data, see SAP Connectors.

Implementation and Usage Notes

BAPIs are business functions provided by SAP. Typically, BAPIs provide applications with access to the business objects stored in the SAP database without the applications needing to know the details of how the tables are implemented. However, you can define and implement custom BAPIs to provide other functions that may or may not access the SAP database. When the standard set of BAPIs does not provide the required data for analytics in Birst, custom BAPIs need to be written and added to the SAP system.

Sometimes even though the BAPI function interface says that some parameters are optional, in many cases the results are not obtained unless meaningful values are provided. Use SAP Logon or another SAP client that can interrogate BAPI objects and its interfaces to check which parameters are required.

Note: With the 5.29.6 release, you can now specify Birst Variables as input for BAPI Parameters. For more details about Birst variables, see, Creating Variables and Using Variables.

Prerequisites

In order to extract data from SAP, you must have the Birst Connect and Infor SAP Connector products installed. See Checking Which Products Are Installed.

Before beginning these steps, you need to configure Birst Connect to run from the command line and download the SAP library files.

To create an extraction task using BAPI calls

  1. Run cmdUI.bat from the \commandline folder to launch Birst Connect. Birst Connect opens.

  2. Click Add Task to create a new task. Give the task a name in the Properties tab.
  3. From the Sources tab, click Add Object(s) to define data extracts from SAP.
  4. Enter your SAP account credentials.
  5. Click Get Objects to get a list of available SAP business objects and exposed methods. Depending on the connected SAP system, this may take a few minutes.
  6. Choose either Custom Application Server or Group/Server Selection.

    Or:

  7. Select an object and method. Depending on your selection, a dialog box may open for entering required and optional method parameters (as shown below). Required parameters are marked with an asterisk.

  8. After you have made your selections, click OK.
  9. If you would like to schedule extractions in Birst Connect, click the Schedule tab and fill it out. See Scheduling Birst Connect Tasks Using an External Scheduler.
  10. Select File - Save Settings in the main BirstInfor Connect window.
  11. To extract the objects you selected immediately, select the task you created and click Run Tasks Now. You will receive a confirmation message when the objects have been extracted.

  12. You can see the extracted objects in Admin - Define Sources - Manage Sources - Data Sources as in the example below.

See Also
Overview of Extracting Data from SAP ERP and BW
Running Birst Connect from the Command Line