Using XML to generate SAP ABAP and/or SAPScript?

Question

Has anyone got examples and/or experience of generating SAP ABAP or SAPScript form code from XML that came from an external application?

This would help:

• creation of SAP-based applications in a data-driven way by automating the knowledge to do so from the export of XML from an external application
• automated inputting of knowledge from an external application into SAP applications, rather than manually copying between systems
• enable 3rd-party external tools to be used to create data, perhaps in a more easier-to-use way than could be done in SAP. Or if there was already heavy investment in training with these third party tools rather than SAP, or if the employment market favoured staff with knowledge of these tools
• enable creation of data for multiple purposes, views: those in SAP and outside SAP.
• enable inter-operability of SAP with 3rd-party external tools

I'm looking for: - experiences as to the feasibility - tools, e.g. parsers, XSLT etc. - examples

Answer 1

You could look at SAPLink.

This is an application that allows to generate such programs / functions /etc from a set of XML files. It also allow you to generate these files from the objects, thus allowing to transport the objects between two unrelated systems.

You could simply generate the xml files, and use SAPLink to import and generate the code.

Regards
Guillaume

Answer 2

Definitely feasible - take a look at http://www.volker-wegert.de/en/mdd-sap-r3. Be aware that you really need a deep knowledge of the R/3 side before you attempt to generate anything. As a rule of thumb, if you can't create it manually, you can't generate it either.

I'd recommend to keep the actual generation process out of the R/3 system because there are tools like EMF and the former oAW components that really kick ass when it comes to generating stuff. I'd also recommend a two-phase generation approach - generate an (external) model that represents what you want to generate in the SAP system, then transfer the contents of that model into the system. This way, the generator is much easier to debug.

RCER http://rcer.sf.net has a (very incomplete) repository object model - that could be extended to hold whatever entities you need. Personally, I'd love to see a SAPlink <--> RCER ROM converter - don't have the time to write one myself, though. This would allow you to

• create a modeling application based on Eclipse / EMF
• use oAW tools (Xtend / Xpand) for model transformation and code generation
• convert the resulting model to a SAPlink file
• upload the generated file into the system

I've done pretty much the same thing, except that instead of SAPlink, I've used RFC calls. Since I've had to write the function modules to generate classes and other objects myself, it's not really reusable - and it belongs to my former employer...