SAP XI and COM interface

Question

The Import / Export Service has been developed by 3rd Party to allow you to programmatically load information into the 3rd Party Command Centre System. The service can be used to initialise new installations, and to synchronise data in an on-going basis with other applications within your organisation. The Import / Export Service is a licensable feature. Therefore, for this feature to work, your site must have the Import option turned on in their licence file.
The service consists of a Microsoft Component Object Model (COM) Automation interface, and a set of import / export plus data translation scripts. Data is imported into the system using the Extensible Markup Language (XML). While this is the sole format the system uses for data imports, translation scripts are provided to convert from comma or other delimited file formats, to XML.
Data may be loaded into or extracted from the 3rd Party Command Centre System in an on-line real time manner, or in a batch oriented approach. The method that is most appropriate to you will depend on your specific business requirements. The on-line method is appropriate if you require data to be immediately updated in 3rd party Command Centre after being keyed by an operator into one of your existing applications, or where an external application requires immediate access to data held in 3rd Party Command Centre. This method is provided via a COM Automation interface that can be called by any COM compatible programming language, (e.g. VB, Delphi, JScript). The batch approach also uses the Automation interface, but information is passed to or from 3rd Party Command Centre in one or more data files rather than directly through the programming interface. This approach can either be initiated by calling the COM interface directly, or by setting up a scheduled task that looks for, and processes, new files.
My question is can I directly communicate with this COM interface with the existing adapters of SAP XI. I had initially thought of file adapetr to put the XML file in the FTP location from where this COM interface will poll and pick the file but in a real time scenario can we go for this approach. The other option is to publish this COM interface as a webservice but not sure how much rework is required to make this COM Service webservice enabled.
Apart from this can you suggest any other approach which we can work out.
Thanks in advance
Ravijeet

Answer 1

Hi Ravijeet !
You could develop a Java Proxy client that uses the COM objects to extract data and send them directly to XI (http://research.microsoft.com/~chadv/java_com2.htm)
Or you could develop a proxy application in VB or any other tool and do the COM calls and then connect to XI via HTTP, RFC (e.g. SAP .NET Connector) without creating any file in any file system.
Regards,
Matias.
ps: please award points if helpful