Web Services Toolkit: Excel 2003 - SAP (WAS 620) integration

[Former Member]

Hello,

I have trying to prototype a scenario wherein I would like to use Excel 2003 as a "dashboard" with enterprise data coming out of a SAP 620 box.

<u>What am I using ?</u>

VBA in Excel 2003

Office Web Services Toolkit

SOAP/RFC ICM service from SAP 620 to access RFC function modules

<i>I dont have Visual Studio and if possible would like to avoid it</i>

<u>What did I try ?</u>

I was playing around with the Office Web Services Toolkit and found that it works quite well with simple types like String / Int / Double. In fact, the proxy that it generates is quite decent and very usable. Unfortunately, with SAP function modules the proxy class generated uses MSXML2.IXMLDOMNodeList and I have not been able to figure out how to send / receive data with this interface. I was just not able to get a solution working with a simple RFC like STFC_CONNECTION. Surprisingly, MS Infopath is quite easy to use with SAP Web Services. I was able to easily create a Mater-Detail form with BANK_GET_LIST and BANK_GET_DETAIL BAPIs.

<u>My questions</u>

(1) Is this (using Web Services Toolkit) the right way to go about doing Excel - SAP integration ? I know Visual Studio would be an obvious answer, but can I do without it ?

(2) Does somebody have a sample that can be shared with the community and can get me started? (dealing with complex types)

(3) Would Mendocino be the future for Office - SAP integration (specially with regard to SAP's commitment to delivering Office smart clients)?

Thanks a lot for all the help.

Regards, Parag.

[Former Member]

Meanwhile, I was trying out "public" webservices from Excel and have observed a pattern.

For .Net Webservices, the toolkit uses the type mapper to create a factory class and a "structure" class. These are used to encapsulate the complex type and then it becomes quite easy to consume the proxy class.

For some non .Net Webservices (RPC style), it is also able to use the type mapper.

<i>(If you know of non .Net Webservices (Doc style), please let me know the WSDL URL and I can try it with the toolkit)</i>

Any reason why the toolkit would not do the same for a SAP Webservice ?