Hi:
I just need orientation with the following problem because Im not a user of webMethods but this product is the integration tool used in my clients company:
We have an application that needs to read employee information from SAP using webMethods so I guess we need to ask to SAP staff to build a Stored Procedure that receives the employee number and returns the Name, Department and other information we need and after that we should ask to the webMethods staff to implement a service for that stored procedure and gave us the parameters needed in order to connect that service to our application and get the information we need. Is this correct or to have a service online requesting information from SAP could affect SAP`s performance?.
These are things that will most likely need to be done:
Communication from SAP to webMethods Integration Server
On the SAP end, a BAPI/RFC (i.e., a SAP function accessible by an external system) containing the desired information will need to be created - there may already be an existing one providing what you need.
If the Integration Server installation at the company contains the SAP adapter, it may communicate to SAP directly. Otherwise, the BAPI/RFC will need to be exposed as a web service on the SAP end and Integration Server would consume that service.
Communication from webMethods Integration Server to your application
Once Integration Server is able to get the information from SAP, it may expose it as web services for consumption by applications like yours. You will need to talk to the webMethods team to agree on the message contract (what’s sent and what’s recevied). Then, your application will need to be able to make web service requests. The web service might be implemented as SOAP or alternatively as an HTTP call with an XML or JSON (possibly following REST practices).
Regarding your question about performance… I don’t think there would be any issues. If there was an export of thousands of employees, the solution might need to be revisited.
In the case of a service that retrieves information for a single employee, there should be minimal performance concerns. The only exception would be if your application made the call for one user at a time and it had to go through a very long list of employees as part of a single interaction. In that case, alternatives might need to be looked at.