Sap XI reading external databases (DB/2 on PC)

[Former Member]

My company looking at Sap XI, to replace interfaces written by Sap Business Connector (BC). Currently BC connects to remote PC database (Db2) are reads the table via odbc connections and passes the data thru BC into Sap Function Module (RFC) as input parameters.

Questions

1. Can Sap XI connect to remote database (PC) directly or do you need to convert the data into XML format ?

2 In Business Connector a remote PC Appl can trigger a process on BC to run via Http statement, I.e., http://abcbuscon01:5555/invoke/ABCXXX.Process/SAP_ABC_Interface

Can you do this in Sap XI ? If so, what does the command in the remote system look like to tirgger a process on XI to run.

Thanks for any assistance...

Bill Sharp

[Former Member]

Hi Bill,

1. XI can connect to external databases via the JDBC adapter. To use the JDBC adapter you need to install a JDBC driver for the database you are using. These drivers are vendor-specific. In your case you would have to find a vendor who makes a JDBC driver for DB2, or perhaps an JDBC-ODBC bridge.

The message format internal to XI will be in XML, but the JDBC adapter will nicely generate SQL statements to go communicate with your DB.

2. This can be achieved with the plain HTTP adapter, which is built into XI. You can find all the information in the online help at

help.sap.com / SAP NetWeaver/ SAP XI / SAP XI2.0 SR1 / Runtime / adapters / plain HTTP adapter.

Hope this helps,

Cheers,

Jerome