The SAP DCOM Connector allows communication between an R/3 system and an external application via the "outside-in" approach, but there are times when you will actually need the process to work in the opposite direction. While this was possible in the past, it was by no means easy! Now, with Release 4.6D of the RFC SDK, there is a simple way to do this — via the generic RFC server COM4ABAP. This server, which is compatible with R/3 Release 4.0B and up, runs on Windows and allows you to instantiate and work with any COM component that is accessible from the machine on which the program is running. Furthermore, COM4ABAP takes care of type conversions between COM data types and the corresponding ABAP types. This article shows you how COM4ABAP handles data exchange between COM objects and ABAP programs. It outlines the infrastructure needed to communicate between R/3 and the COM4ABAP generic RFC server, and how to set it up as a service. It also demonstrates how to write a COM component and talk to it from an ABAP program, and provides some COM4ABAP programming shortcuts, as well as alternate ways of running multiple COM4ABAP server instances as standalone programs.
Jonathan Maidstone
Jonathan Maidstone is a Product Manager within the SAP NetWeaver organization with overall responsibility for test tools. After graduating from the University of Bristol (UK) in 1996 with a degree in modern languages, he joined SAP as a translator for the ABAP Language and ABAP Workbench departments. His association with the eCATT team began in 2001, following a spell as a technical writer working on the SAP Control Framework and DCOM Connector projects.
You may contact the author at
jonathan.maidstone@sap.com.
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