Advice Needed: Startup interested in SAP / Oracle integration info

[daniel.bigred]

We're a small startup that requires integration with SAP and Oracle to retrieve certain transactional meta data (invoice / credit note etc). We have our own application that would handle the retrieved data and push to the endpoint. The retrieval would either need to be "on-demand" or on a schedule that our application controls. Our application is written in c# and would log to a SQL DB.

Since I have no experience with either SAP or Oracle, I'm not sure what would be involved, what sort of efforts are required, whether there are native API that does this and the intricacies of the differing versions of the platforms.

Please could someone give me an idea of the efforts, I don't need a work-breakdown but a ball-park estimate e.g. "about a week" I need this to report back to the board. A bonus would be anyone who could give the average rates for the contractors who would be able to do this.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Batista]

Cant speak about SAP, but for Oracle I have written numerous webservices that interrogates databases(Oracle,as400,mysql, MSSQL) and then returns results to the end point client.Your C# developer can (should) be able to do this.

 

[Zarnicate]

Have you had a look at web services? Specifically OData. It was originally developed by Microsoft however is standardized. From a SAP point of view quite easy and relatively easy. I cannot comment on Oracle however it should also be possible.

On the SAP side depending on the amount of customization there are standard function modules that gets Sales or Financial documents which can be used to create the model in SAP.

How long depends on your developer skill level. A very good one should be able to do it a day or two otherwise about a week. That is also where your cost comes in depending on the skill level determines the cost.

 

[daniel.bigred]

Cant speak about SAP, but for Oracle I have written numerous webservices that interrogates databases(Oracle,as400,mysql, MSSQL) and then returns results to the end point client.Your C# developer can (should) be able to do this.

Thank you! To be honest, I thought it would be as simple but preferred not to suggest that it could be. Ideally we want to use API as that, in theory, would avoid issues with version updates and database changes but I don't see that as being a frequent issue.

 

[daniel.bigred]

Have you had a look at web services? Specifically OData. It was originally developed by Microsoft however is standardized. From a SAP point of view quite easy and relatively easy. I cannot comment on Oracle however it should also be possible.

On the SAP side depending on the amount of customization there are standard function modules that gets Sales or Financial documents which can be used to create the model in SAP.

How long depends on your developer skill level. A very good one should be able to do it a day or two otherwise about a week. That is also where your cost comes in depending on the skill level determines the cost.

That is awesome, seems like our first-prize solution. Do these oData web services vary much from version to version - specifically, the W/S relating to financial documents?

 

[Dan C]

You can use sap dotnet connector to call a SAP RFM to retrieve the data.

 

[Zarnicate]

That is awesome, seems like our first-prize solution. Do these oData web services vary much from version to version - specifically, the W/S relating to financial documents?

Currently SAP only support V2 of OData but should be able to do V3 soon. However it is just a model. You can find out more info on OData: http://www.odata.org/

OData is a RESTful webservice (XML or JSON) or you can do an older SOAP web service. Either one, web service is the way to go.

Would recommend OData because it is generic and you should be able to use it for both SAP or Oracle (Somebody with Oracle exp should confirm this)

 

[daniel.bigred]

You can use sap dotnet connector to call a SAP RFM to retrieve the data.

Currently SAP only support V2 of OData but should be able to do V3 soon. However it is just a model. You can find out more info on OData: http://www.odata.org/

OData is a RESTful webservice (XML or JSON) or you can do an older SOAP web service. Either one, web service is the way to go.

Would recommend OData because it is generic and you should be able to use it for both SAP or Oracle (Somebody with Oracle exp should confirm this)

Thanks for the feedback, I really appreciate it! I'm in a much better position to answer questions: at least I know the rough length of the piece of string