Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Testing your RFC hosted in BizTalk from SAP

In a recent blog post I discussed how you would host an RFC in BizTalk that SAP could call.  I thought it would be helpful if I also included a post that would discuss how you can test your BizTalk Hosted RFC.  Like most BizTalk Developers, I wanted to be able to perform some tests on my own without bothering our SAP team.  So by following these steps I was able to perform some tests on my own.

NOTE: Performing the following steps will require developer permissions in SAP. I suspect that with this kind of access I could get myself in all kinds of trouble.  Luckily for me, our SAP Security team didn’t ask me too many questions when I requested access.  Smile

 

Testing

  • Execute the SE37 “ABAB Function Modules” transaction.
  • Type in the name of your Function Module.  In my case it is ZISU_RFC_ADD and then click the Test/Execute button highlighted in Red or press F8

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  • We now have the opportunity to provide our inputs.  If you recall from my previous post, this RFC will accept two integer inputs and then provided the sum in the response message.  Once we have our two inputs populated we can click on the Execute button (highlighted in red) or click the F8 button.
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  • Our result will now be displayed on screen and we will discover how long it took to get the result.

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Exceptions

So what happens if BizTalk is not available when you perform one of these tests?  I was curious as well so I simply disabled my receive location, executed my test and received the following result.

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Its not pretty but it describes that the “program BizTalk_Z_Add” is not registered.  This is saying that our listener that is using this Program ID is not online. This is a similar error message that we receive during a failed Connected Client test from SM59.

Conclusion

SAP can be a very large and daunting system at times but the more and more I get into it the more comfortable  I feel about its ability to integrate with other systems.  Tools like this one (SE37) and the IDOC resubmit transaction(WE19) can be a BizTalk dev’s best friend when integrating with SAP.

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

SAP calling RFC hosted in BizTalk

If you have been following this blog you have most likely encountered a few blog posts related to SAP integration.  I also wrote two chapters related to SAP integration in a BizTalk book last year.  In all of the journeys that I have taken with SAP, not once have I encountered a situation were I needed to receive a request from SAP that required a synchronous response.  All of my previous experience required asynchronous messaging with SAP when receiving data from SAP.  We now have a scenario that requires SAP to send BizTalk a “fetch” request and BizTalk needs to provide this information in near real-time.  What was very interesting about this scenario many people within our organization didn’t think, or know it was possible.  I guess it was tough for some to wrap their head around the concept of SAP actually needing information from another system since it tends to be a System of Record.

SAPRFC.INI HUH???

A good starting point for this scenario is in the MSDN documentation.  Initially I thought it would be pretty straight forward and would resemble a situation where BizTalk receives an IDOC.  That was until I received an error similar to the one below indicating that an saprfc.ini file could not be found when enabling the SAP Receive Location.

Log Name:      Application
Source:        BizTalk Server
Date:          3/6/2012 7:12:53 PM
Event ID:      5644
Task Category: BizTalk Server
Level:         Error
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:      SERVER

Description:
The Messaging Engine failed to add a receive location "Receive Location2" with URL "sap://CLIENT=010;LANG=EN;@a/SAPSERVER/00?ListenerDest=ZRFCADD&ListenerGwServ=sapgw00&ListenerGwHost=SAPHOST&ListenerProgramId=Biztalk_Z_Add&RfcSdkTrace=False&AbapDebug=False" to the adapter "WCF-SAP". Reason: "Microsoft.Adapters.SAP.RFCException: Details: ErrorCode=RFC_OK. ErrorGroup=RFC_ERROR_SYSTEM_FAILURE. SapErrorMessage=Open file 'C:\SAPINI\saprfc.ini' failed: 'No such file or directory'.  AdapterErrorMessage=Error accepting incoming connection. RfcAccept returned RFC_HANDLE_NULL..
 

This really confused me since I could successfully connect to SAP and receive IDOCs.  After some digging, I discovered the following webpage that indicated: “The RFC library will read the saprfc.ini file to find out the connection type and all RFC-specific parameters needed to connect to an SAP system, or to register an RFC server program at an SAP gateway and wait for RFC calls from any SAP system.”

So how do we solve this?

  • The first thing that we need to do is to create a System Variable called RFC_INI.  We then need to provide a path and a filename.  For the purpose of my example I used C:\SAPINI\saprfc.ini.

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  • Next we need to add the contents to our saprfc.ini file.  The values that I needed to provide include:
Field name Value  
DEST ZRFCADD In this case, this is the name of the RFC Destination that our BASIS team created for us from SM59.  More details here.
TYPE R Type R is for RFC server programs or for a client program working with another external program as RFC server program which is already registered at an SAP gateway.
GWHOST SAP_HOST_NAME In my case, this is the name of the physical server that his hosting the SAP Gateway.
GWSERVER SAP_GATEWAY_NAME The name of the SAP Gateway.  A standard naming convention is: SAPGW## where ## is the system number for the SAP instance that you are working on.
PROGID Biztalk_Z_Add This is the name of the Program ID that has also been provided by BASIS.

 

So if we compare the details between our Receive Location and our saprfc.ini we will see symmetry between the two.  However, the values in the ini file take precedence.

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  • Now that we have have our SAPRFC.ini file and SAP Receive location in order we can run a connected client test using SM59.  To perform this test, launch the SM59 transaction and then expand the TCP/IP Connections node.

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  • Scroll through the list to find your RFC Destination.  In my case, I am looking for ZRFCADD.  Double click on this value.

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  • Click on the Connection Test button to execute the test.

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  • You should see a successful Connection Test.  If not, there is no point trying to call your RFC from SAP until you get this connection issue resolved.  If SAP can’t perform this “ping test” it won’t be able to actually send you data.  To troubleshoot this you will need to ensure that the values that you have in your receive location/ini file match the values that are defined in SM59.  In most cases you will need to rely upon your BASIS Buddy to help you out.  As I mentioned in my book, I do have a good BASIS buddy so this troubleshooting usually goes smoothly.

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  • With our connectivity issues out of the way, we can browse for our desired schemas using the BizTalk Consume Adapter Service Wizard and then add them to our solution.

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  • We can now build out the rest of our application.  In my case I have a very simple map that will add two values that occur in the request message and provide the sum in the response message.

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  • The only special consideration that we need to take care of is to set the WCF.Action in the Response message.  We can do this inside a Message Assignment shape.  If you don’t take care of this, you will receive a run time error.

sapResponse(WCF.Action) = "http://Microsoft.LobServices.Sap/2007/03/Rfc/ZISU_RFC_ADD/response";

We now are in a position to deploy our application and start receiving requests from SAP.

Conclusion

Overall the process was pretty similar to receiving IDOCs with the exception of the INI file and the WCF Action property requiring being populated.  Performance is similar to receiving or sending IDOCs so you won’t take any additional performance hits.

Monday, March 5, 2012

New BizTalk Book Announced - (MCTS): Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010 (70-595) Certification Guide

Today I found out that the latest book that I have been contributing to is now available for pre-order.  I got involved with this project right around the time that my  last book was published.  Our editor on that book offered us the opportunity to work on this book.  Johan Hedberg, the lead author, was also extended this opportunity.  So after a moment of weakness, and perhaps a few beers on a boat ride in Stockholm, I agreed to get involved in this book as well.  Joining us on this adventure is Morten la Cour who lives in Denmark and also has a vast amount of BizTalk experience.

The book is a preparation guide for the latest BizTalk Server 2010 Certification.  In this book you will be provided with practical examples of the skills that will be measured on this exam.  In our book we do cover each of the areas that will be tested including:

  • Configuring a Messaging Architecture
  • Developing BizTalk Artifacts
  • Debugging and Exception Handling
  • Integrating Web Services and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Services
  • Implementing Extended Capabilities
  • Deploying, Tracking, and Supporting a BizTalk Solution

We also include valuable sample questions at the end of each chapter and also include an entire chapter at the end of the book that should provide you with a good gauge as to whether or not you are ready to write the test.  This book is not a brain dump.  If you are looking for any easy way out you won’t find it here.  But if you already have a good base of BizTalk knowledge and are willing to put in the effort to really understand the content in this book, I am confident that you will do well on the exam.

I would also like to extend thanks to the technical reviewers that have spent hours reviewing our content which without a doubt has increased the quality of the book.  Our reviewers include:

  • Steef-Jan Wiggers
  • Mikael Hakansson
  • Jan Eliasen
  • Genuine Basil

The anticipated publish date is in May, 2012.  In the mean time, you can read more about our book on the Packt website :  http://www.packtpub.com/mcts-microsoft-biztalk-server-2010-certification-guide/book

 

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