Connect to the SAP System in Visual Studio
This section provides information about how to use the Consume Adapter Service Add-in, the Add Adapter Metadata Wizard, and the Add Adapter Service Reference Plug-in.
The Consume Adapter Service BizTalk Project Add-in is available in BizTalk Server projects. You use the Consume Adapter Service Add-in to generate message schemas (XSDs) for operations that you want to target in your BizTalk solution. For more information about developing solutions with BizTalk Server, see Develop SAP applications using the WCF Service Model.
The Add Adapter Metadata Wizard is available in BizTalk Server projects. You use the Add Adapter Metadata Wizard to generate message schemas (XSDs) for operations that you want to target in your BizTalk solution. For more information about developing solutions with BizTalk Server, see Develop SAP applications using the WCF Service Model.
Note
Because the SAP adapter is exposed both as a WCF-Custom binding and as BizTalk adapter, you can use either the Consume Adapter Service Add-in or the Add Adapter Metadata Wizard from a BizTalk project to connect to an SAP system.
The Add Adapter Service Reference Visual Studio Plug-in is available in non-BizTalk programming projects. You use the Add Adapter Service Reference Plug-in to generate a WCF client class or a WCF service callback interface when you develop solutions using the WCF service model. For more information about developing solutions with the WCF service model, see Develop SAP applications using the WCF Service Model.
To use the Consume Adapter Service BizTalk Project Add-in, the Add Adapter Metadata Wizard, or the Add Adapter Service Reference Visual Studio Plug-in you must first connect to the SAP system. All three user interface present a dialog box through which you configure a connection by setting the following:
Connection parameters. These are the parameters that are used to build the connection URI such as application server host or message server host, and client ID.
User name password credentials for the SAP system. These are used to authenticate you on the SAP system when the connection is established. You must specify a user name and password.
Binding properties. Binding properties are optional and whether you specify them depends primarily on whether you target operations that require specific binding properties to be set. For example, for a ReceiveIdoc operation you must set the ReceiveIdocFormat binding property to String. For more information about binding properties, see Read about BizTalk Adapter for mySAP Business Suite binding properties.
At a minimum, when you configure the connection to the SAP system, you only have to specify binding properties and connection parameters that are needed to establish the connection and that affect the metadata returned by the SAP adapter for the operations you want to target. However, you might also want to specify values for any additional binding properties and connection parameters that will be used at run time. This is because:
The Consume Adapter Service Add-in creates a BizTalk port binding file from the binding properties and connection parameters that you specify when you configure the connection and adds this file to your project.
The Add Adapter Service Reference Plug-in creates an app.config file from the binding properties and connection properties that you specify when you configure the connection and adds this file in your project directory.