php in the enterprise connecting to sap

PHP in the Enterprise – connecting to SAP17.10.2006 | SDN Day TechEd 06 | Björn Schotte

© MAYFLOWER GmbH 2006 2

„PHP and SAP“

Björn Schotte - „PHP Pioneer“

❙ 1998/1999: PHP-Center.de

❙ 2000: world‘s first PHP Conference

❙ 2001: editor-in-chief PHP Magazin

❙ 2001: International PHP Conference

❙ 2001: co-founder of ThinkPHP

❙ 2004: refounding Mayflower GmbH


„PHP and SAP“

ThinkPHP – The LAMP Experts

❙ high-level software development since 2001

❙ PHP trainings for more than 300 people from Top50 companies

❙ PHP Support

❙ Enterprise PHP Support

❙ Guaranteed reaction times up to 2 hours

❙ Basic, Professional, Gold – 24/7 available on request

❙ Fostering the PHP community and PHP itself in Germany

❙ „ThinkPHP by Mayflower“ – a division of Mayflower GmbH

❙ See http://www.mayflower.biz/

http://www.mayflower.biz/


„PHP and SAP“

Mayflower GmbH

❙ ~ 35 employees

❙ „ThinkPHP – by Mayflower“

❙ Customers include:❙ Siemens COM❙ Vaillant Group❙ Telefónica Germany❙ O2 Germany❙ Government of Munich❙ HypoVereinsbank❙ Sixt AG❙ Bundeskriminalamt❙ Plus (Discounter)❙ sourceforge.net

❙ 4 managing partners(founders of ThinkPHP)

❙ well-known in the PHP community

❙ Know How is more than PHP-only (High Performance web architecture, .NET, …)

❙ Big projects in the range of man-years with PHP (HVB, Vaillant, Sixt, Telefónica)

❙ OpenSource Software vendor(i.e. PHProjekt, Outlook Sync, …)


„PHP and SAP“

PHP – a scripting language and its history

❙ „PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor“

❙ 1994/1995 first version by Rasmus Lerdorf (PHP/FI)

❙ two Israelis, Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans, mainlysupported writing a new engine, ZendEngine. Foundationof PHP3

❙ PHP4 in 2000

❙ PHP5 in 2004

❙ PHP6 heading up

❙ more than 1,000 contributors to PHP and itssubprojects


„PHP and SAP“

PHP adoption

❙ PHP is found on 34,30% of public websites worldwide(source: nexen.net PHP adoption statistics)

❙ PHP is the most used technology on the internet

❙ about 4,5 million PHP developers worldwide


„PHP and SAP“

The LAMP Stack

❙ Linux❙ Apache (or: lighttpd)❙ MySQL (Oracle, DB2, …)❙ PHP

❙ … the star of the web❙ … OpenSource, licensing & infrastructure for free❙ … small and fast


„PHP and SAP“

Why is PHP so popular? (I)

❙ easy to learn❙ easy to install, mostly preinstalled on many distros, shared

hosts etc.❙ packages like XAMPP give you

Webserver+Database+Scripting language in an instant❙ get results from the first second (no complicated OO

candy to achieve results)❙ write your PHP code inside HTML

❙ advanced developers will use templates


„PHP and SAP“

Why is PHP so popular? (II)

❙ good for projects with rapid requirements changes❙ also good for large projects and high performance web

applications (Yahoo, billions of PVs per day with PHP)❙ often architecture of application will change throughout

the whole project

❙ „solve the web problem quickly“


„PHP and SAP“

PHP - the glue language

❙ more than 100 extensions are available (PHP = Borg)❙ many 3rd party libraries are supported by a extension

❙ many integration extensions/APIs❙ RPC (XML-RPCi, SOAP, WDDX, …)❙ SAPRFC❙ Corba❙ COM/DCOM❙ XML, SimpleXML❙ Cobol❙ …

❙ every library on every OS is a potential PHP extension(OpenOffice UNO, anyone?)

// parse a RSS file$s = simplexml_load_file('rss-0.91.xml');foreach ($s->item as $item) {

print $item->title . "\n";}


„PHP and SAP“

Suited for „Enterprise“?

❙ mission critical web applications (Basel II ratingapplications for HypoVereinsbank, booking systems forLufthansa)

❙ supported every major database for years

❙ broad XML/WebService support

❙ Java connectivity (http://php-java-bridge.sourceforge.net/)

❙ highly scalable (shared nothing architecture)

❙ use www.lighttpd.net instead of Apache to speed thingsup

❙ possibility for short time-to-market through RAD

http://php-java-bridge.sourceforge.net/

http://www.lighttpd.net/


„PHP and SAP“

Broad industry support

❙ Oracle – supporting ext/oci8

❙ IBM

❙ supporting DB2 extension

❙ porting SDO (Service Data Objects) to PHP

❙ enhancing SOAP extension (for Websphere comp.)

❙ evangelising PHP in the Enterprise

❙ Filemaker, Adobe, …

❙ providing SDKs/APIs for their products to PHP

❙ SAP

❙ … we will see ☺


„PHP and SAP“

Saving money with PHP/LAMP

❙ „more functionality per Dollar“❙ agile methodology (thanks to Scrum, XP)❙ fast results❙ first prototype is available in days instead of weeks or

month

❙ short, iterative development cycles❙ can adopt extremely fast to changing markets❙ short time-to-market❙ aligned at the customer and his business processes


„PHP and SAP“

Rapid prototyping – coming from hell?


„PHP and SAP“

Rapid Prototyping gives you …

❙ results in days instead of weeks and months

❙ continouus development alongside the prototype

❙ customer can give feedback, application can be changed

directly according to his feedback

❙ works at every time during the development

❙ PHP enables you to do quick changes in complex

environments


„PHP and SAP“

PHP connecting to SAP (I)

❙ ext/saprfc❙ direct calling RFCs❙ not so stable❙ hopefully will change in the future

❙ using SOAP through ext/soap, connecting to Netweaver XI

❙ Prefer PHP5, not PHP4 based packages (userlandimplementations not very good in supporting other clientlanguages, PHP5 ext/soap is the future)

❙ Netweaver XI delivers appropriate WSDL files(unfortunately, one per command)


„PHP and SAP“

PHP connecting to SAP (II)

❙ BAPI mapping to WSDL on Netweaver/XI side❙ connecting to it by using the standard commands from

ext/soap

$this->gettasks = CATS_WSDL_PATH . 'GetTasks.wsdl';$this->client = new SOAPClient($this->gettasks,array('trace' => 1, 'exceptions' => 1,

'login' => ‚foo', 'password' => ‚bar'));

$caller_array = array('DATE' => date('Y-m-d'),'PERNR' => $pernr,'PROJID' => $projectid

);

try {$tasks = $this->client->GetTasks($caller_array);

} catch (SoapFault $f) {return array(false, $f);

}

...

GetTasks.wsdl wasdelivered by Netweaver/XI andsaved locally.


„PHP and SAP“

Case Study: Vaillant Group

❙ Vaillant Group offers tailored solutions for domestic comfort

❙ Turnover (2005): 1,791 billion Euro

❙ Total sales: >2,7 million heating appliances

❙ Employees: 8,616


„PHP and SAP“

CS: SAP integration projects with PHP

❙ vrnetDIALOG: direct billing for specific functions

❙ Group Intranet: Web2.0-style application for connecting to CATS/PS for 300 employees from R&D

❙ Spare Parts Shop: direct selling through SAP


„PHP and SAP“

vrnetDIALOG

❙ more than 1,200 PHP classes, >300,000 loc❙ European self-service platform for customers and service

organisations❙ remote parametrisation of heating appliances, intelligent

systems❙ SAP connectivity for direct billing of different service

functions


„PHP and SAP“

vrnetDIALOG – SAP connectivity

vrnetDIALOG(LAMP)

SOAP Proxy(LAMP)

SAP/XI

Internal netInternet


„PHP and SAP“

Vaillant Group Intranet: Project Bookings

❙ 300 R&D developers used SAP CATS/PS on their own

❙ no integration into Intranet

❙ not so comfortable UI

❙ searching for a better solution


„PHP and SAP“

Vaillant Group Intranet: Solution

❙ small application inside Intranet system (LAMP based)

❙ with SAP connectivity to Netweaver XI (PHP5 SOAP)

❙ saved also licensing costs

❙ modern Web GUI in „Web 2.0“ style (Drag&Drop, AJAX)

❙ tightly integrated into the Intranet system (withauthentication against 7 ADs european-wide)

❙ first functional prototype after 2 mandays of work

❙ whole application finished after 2 weeks


„PHP and SAP“

Spare Parts Webshop

❙ LAMP powered solution on the web

❙ creates CD version (more than100,000 installations europe-wide) by converting MySQL->SQLite and using InstallAnywhere to createWindows installer package

❙ uses OCR technology

❙ SAP direct selling of spare parts(normally only through wholesalersin some markets)

❙ check for real-time availability ofspare parts and buy them


„PHP and SAP“

Architecture Spare Parts Webshop

Spare Part Shop(LAMP)

SOAP Proxy(LAMP) SAP/XI

Internal netInternet


„PHP and SAP“

Q&A

Thank you!

Björn SchotteMayflower GmbHPleichertorstr. 297070 Würzburg+49 (931) 35 9 65 - [email protected]://www.mayflower.biz/

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.mayflower.biz/

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