SAP BAPI

Overview

The SAP BAPI connector allows you to integrate your flow with the SAP ERP through Business Application Programming Interfaces (BAPIs), which are standardized functions to access business processes and data in the SAP system.

In other words, a BAPI is like an "official gateway" that SAP provides so that external systems can query or manipulate data and processes without needing to directly access internal tables or write ABAP code.

What you can do

• Query data

  • Retrieve information about customers, vendors, materials, sales orders, inventory, etc.

    Example: BAPI_CUSTOMER_GETDETAIL returns complete customer data.

• Create records

  • Insert new business data into SAP.

    Example: BAPI_SALESORDER_CREATEFROMDAT2 creates a sales order.

• Update records

  • Modify existing data.

    Example: BAPI_EMPLOYEE_CHANGE updates employee data.

• Execute business operations

  • Trigger internal SAP processes (release documents, perform calculations, generate accounting entries).

    Example: BAPI_GOODSMVT_CREATE records an inventory movement.

• Test connection and availability

  • Validate if SAP is responding.

    Example: STFC_CONNECTION (returns system information, client, user, etc.).

Instruction structure (syntax)

Communication with this connector uses a specific key-value structure to map BAPI parameters.

• Command: always starts with CALL FUNCTION <BAPI_NAME>.

• Parameters: are defined after the colon ":".

• Groupings:

  • Parentheses ( ): enclose a single key-value pair or an object.
  • Brackets [ ]: enclose lists of items or multiple parameters.

• Syntax:

Examples

Check out examples of instructions for the SAP BAPI connector:

Connectivity validation

Instruction:

In the instruction below, the SAP BAPI connector calls the STFC_CONNECTION function in SAP. This function is a standard SAP BAPI, used to test connectivity between the client system (in this case, Sensedia Integrations) and the SAP server.

NOTE

The brackets [] indicate that no additional parameters were passed in the call.

Return (log):

• The log excerpt shows the successful execution of the SAP BAPI connector when calling the STFC_CONNECTION test function.
• SAP responded to the request confirming the connection with information about system, client, user, and date/time.
• HTTP status 200 ensures there was no integration error.

NOTE

Read about log details.

Table reading

Instruction:

The instruction below reads the first 5 rows of table T001 in SAP, returning only the BUKRS and BUTXT fields, separated by semicolons.

Instruction parts:

• FUNCTION RFC_READ_TABLE: defines that the table reading function will be executed.
• IMPORTING: contains simple input parameters that configure the function call.
  • QUERY_TABLE: T001: indicates the table to be queried (T001, which contains Company Codes information).
  • DELIMITER: ;: defines that returned fields will be separated by semicolons.
  • ROWCOUNT: 5: limits the return to the first 5 rows of the table.
• TABLES: defines parameters in table format, used to send or receive lists of records.
  • FIELDS: specifies the table fields that should be returned (if omitted, returns all columns, which may cause slowness or memory overflow).
    • BUKRS: company code (Company Code).
    • BUTXT: company description (Company Name).

Return (log):

Check two excerpts of the response payload recorded in the logs:

INPUT: shows the query parameters: queried table, maximum number of records, delimiter, and additional options.

DATA (excerpt): brings the values returned from the query.

In this example:

• The WA (Work Area) field brings the data concatenated by the chosen delimiter
• 300: MANDT (SAP Client)
• 0001: BUKRS (Company Code)
• SAP Brazil: BUTXT (Company Name)
• Sao Paolo: ORT01 (City)
• BR: LAND1 (Country)
• BRL: WAERS (Currency)

Possible configuration errors

Below we list some common errors that may occur when using the SAP BAPI connector and recommended solutions.

• Error calling BAPI function in SAP

  Generic execution error.

  • Check if the configured user has access permission (object S_TABU_DIS) to the requested table or execution permission in the BAPI.
  • Check if the field names in FIELDS exist in the table.

• Empty return (DATA: [])

  No record matches the criteria defined in OPTIONS.

  • Check if the date is in YYYYMMDD format.
  • Check if the values are in uppercase, as SAP is case-sensitive for data.

• ROWCOUNT ignored

  SAP returned more rows than requested.

  NOTE

  This occurs in certain versions of the function module when there is no primary index in the filter.

  • Apply a script or filter component in your flow to eliminate excess rows.