ABAP Web Service with tables

Question

Hello,
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We need to build a web service with a predefined message in our ERP (ABAP), without PI or WebAS JAVA.
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We thought it should be a simple task, because we had no problem with many other applications and systems when building the same service, but were not able to build it with SAP ABAP, probably as a consequence of our lack of knowledge on ABAP SOAP runtime.
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We have an external asynchronous process that delivers information to many other systems using web services (information diffusion). Concecuently, the web service call's structure is determined by the caller, so we have to fulfill this structure if we want to receive the info.
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The owner of the process defined a very simple service call, in which one kind of  "record" can be repeated 1 to n times:
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&lt;reglasSuscripcion&gt;
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            &lt;!Zero or more repetitions:&gt;
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               &lt;nombre&gt;?&lt;/nombre&gt;
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               &lt;valor&gt;?&lt;/valor&gt;
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               &lt;nombre&gt;?&lt;/nombre&gt;
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               &lt;valor&gt;?&lt;/valor&gt;
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               &lt;nombre&gt;?&lt;/nombre&gt;
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               &lt;valor&gt;?&lt;/valor&gt;
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               &lt;nombre&gt;?&lt;/nombre&gt;
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               &lt;valor&gt;?&lt;/valor&gt;
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&lt;/reglasSuscripcion&gt;
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In order to receive this info, we have to implement an abap web service handler to accept this kind of call, the same way other applications/systems have already done.
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We tried to build a RFC function call and create a web service with the wizard and it resulted in a web service with the following WSDL:
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&lt;soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:urn="urn:sap-com:document:sap:soap:functions:mc-style"&gt;
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         &lt;reglasSuscripcion&gt;
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            &lt;!Zero or more repetitions:&gt;
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            &lt;item&gt;
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               &lt;nombre&gt;?&lt;/nombre&gt;
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               &lt;valor&gt;?&lt;/valor&gt;
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            &lt;/item&gt;
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&lt;item&gt;
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               &lt;nombre&gt;?&lt;/nombre&gt;
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               &lt;valor&gt;?&lt;/valor&gt;
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            &lt;/item&gt;
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         &lt;/reglasSuscripcion&gt;
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We found two main problems:
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1.- When "wrapping" the RFC as a WS with the wizard, for a table datatype it automatically includes the <item></item> tag, so we break the predefined calling rules.
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2.- The namespace is fixed by the wizard, and we would like to use a common namespace for all the "susbscribers", logically, the namespace fixed by the information diffusion service.
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We also tried to find info on the outside-in approach for building a web service from the WSDL, but all the info we found required the ESR and we have no PI, just the ERP.
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Any ideas on how to proceed?
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Thanks in advance,
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Joseba M. Iturbe
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Edited by: Soporte Desarrollo on Mar 5, 2010 10:56 AM

Answer 1

#2.  I've recently had to "zap" some namespaces in an ECC5 system because the calling (TIBCO) system didn't appreciate the default SAP "urn" default - something to do with multiple colons in the address.  There were, I think, just three table this affected, all VEP* ones.  I think I should have been able to change these via the virtual interface in SE80 except that the ECC5 code was a bit "light" in this respect, so you may be able to do this now in SOAMANAGER in ECC6 (btw,  I also had to re-save the WS definition within WSCONFIG and re-activate the virtual interfaces after this "zap" to generated the associated handler class again).
#1. Given your "name / value" pairs represent a complex type, then it might be better practice to have them as "item" which is probably why SAP proposes it this way... what does your custom function module parameter list look like?
Jonathan