Integration of a Web Application

Question

Hi all,
I am looking for a smart way to realize in ABAP a call of an external web application from a R/3 screen
- with exchanging data back and forth,
- with the R/3 to hold on until web app. sends data back
- with the web app. to run a separate Internet Explorer window (not the one within SAP GUI).
The web app. shall calculate the conditions for a quotation. So the user calls VA21 in R/3 (ECC5.0). On the conditions screen there will be a button “web.app” (comes there through modification). Pressing that button the Web Calculation App. will start in an Inter Explorer window. The user enters information here, some information already had to be received from SAP call. When the user finishes in the web appl. the results (conditions) shall appear in the condition lines of VA21.
How can I do it?
I know there is the demo report SAPHTML_DEMO1 using html_control techniques. But this opens always in a SAP GUI IE window. The web application wouldn’t work here as it has some PopUp windows. The SAP GUI IE opens the PopUp in the real Internet Explorer and here the session is lost.
I know the FB CALL_BROWSER. But I wouldn’t know, how to get information back to SAP this way and how to make the R/3 Screen stop just until the web app. has finished.
Any ideas? Thanx!
Karsten

Answer 1

I was thinking of something like:
You create an R3 transaction that does the processing that you need and saves the data in a Z table.
Then create a service file that will run this transaction on the web. You will probably have to use an anonymous logon with the userid and password in the service file.
Modify VA21 (hopefully through user exits or BADIs) so that it can call FM CALL_BROWSER with the url of the new service. Before the browser is called, it would have to lock some object – probably the row of data in the Z table that will be entered.
The web enabled transaction will have to unlock the data that was locked before the call to the browser when it completes.
After any key is pressed in VA21, if the lock object is still set, you will have to let the user know that the web transaction has not completed (he or she may have closed the session or forgotten about it). Then give the user the option of continuing without the web data or going back to complete the web session. You have to decide what to do if they want to continue without the web data. It would have to be able to do the unlock.
If the web transaction tries to unlock the data but it’s not locked, it means that the lock was released by VA21. In this case, the transaction should not save the data.
This analysis is quick and probably very incomplete, but it may give you some ideas on how to proceed.
Good luck.
Rob