SAP remote communications

Abstract

SAP implemented a very deep level synchronous connection type based on industry standards, but early enough, in the first releases SAP enhanced this to Remote Function Call protocol and technology. The Remote Function Call technology opened the system to other SAP systems or external applications. Remote function call (RFC) is the fundamental technique for many different communication approaches within SAP solutions. Our document tries to uncover the different capabilities and usability of the SAP communication types like CPI-C, RFC, Q-API, tRFC, etc. In our study we figured out that main points of remote communication usage in a heterogeneous environment where SAP also in place are the business level communication from other SAP system or external application via business application programming interface (BAPI), and the loosely coupled distributed system environment, the ALE (application link enabling) communications based on RFCs.