Downloading Document Files in the Background

Question

Hello,
I have two questions regarding downloading document files to a Windows server in the background.
<u>First Question:</u>
My company is currently on SAP R/3 4.6B. We have several programs that use function module WS_DOWNLOAD to download documents to a Windows directory (C drive, network server, etc.). However, WS_DOWNLOAD will only work when run in the foreground, since there is no connection to the presentation server when run in the background. Our work around for this has been to create a UNIX file and then FTP it to the Windows server, which can all be done in the background. Is there another way to download directly from SAP to a Windows server in the background with 4.6B.
<u>Second Question:</u>
We have an upgrade to mySAP ERP 2004 scheduled in the near future. Is it possible to do what I've asked above in mySAP ERP 2004?
Thanks,
Jamey

Answer 1

for your first question
Well you can do it in two ways.
1: instead of using FTP from unix, you can use it from within SAP using ftp function modules. for durther details and examples you can check development class SFTP in se80 for function modules and demo programs.
The advantage of this technique is that if FTP fails for some reason, you abap code can generate a proper error message or log so that user can see that file is not transfered.
2: you can run sap supplied program RFCEXEC.exe on your windows server thus making it as an RFC server, that create an RFC destination pointing to this server in SAP (Transaction code SM59) and use this destination to call RFC function modules to create a file on destination from an internal table. you can use the RFC function RFC_REMOTE_FILE
example: your data is in table outtab
  CALL FUNCTION 'RFC_REMOTE_FILE'
     DESTINATION p_dest
     EXPORTING
         file = file
         write = write
     TABLES
         filedata = outtab
     EXCEPTIONS
       communication_failure = 1 MESSAGE msg_text
       system_failure        = 2 MESSAGE msg_text.
cheers