Question Re: SAP & PHP - Newbie in Additional Q&A

SAP & PHP - Newbie

Former Member — Tue, 02 May 2006 20:02:56 GMT

Hi,

I'm new to the whole world of SAP. PHP though I am not new too.

Here at work I guess we have SAP Business One and I am curious if it is possible to use PHP along side with it.

The Blogs I've read seem to use R/3 though I have no idea what that is, but I've been told we do no have it.

Since our company is new to SAP we're looking for ways to develop middleware things for them and since I like PHP I thought I would see if it was possible for our setup to use it.

If not, then I will go off in search of another way. My knowledge currently is only in Web development and VB.NET

Any advice/help etc is greatly appreciated.

Cheers

Tyler

Re: SAP & PHP - Newbie

marilyn_pratt — Tue, 02 May 2006 20:24:08 GMT

There's a good deal of content about SAP and PHP building here on SDN. You may want to take a look at http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn?rid=/webcontent/uuid/6c8d4c3b-0a01-0010-6390-83b9fe3c1411">sap [original link is broken] [original link is broken]

So you can get a better understanding of what you have and what you can do.

Of course there is also Craig's book described in this blog on

cheers

Marilyn

Re: SAP & PHP - Newbie

gregorw — Tue, 02 May 2006 20:34:26 GMT

Hi Tyler,

with B1 you could try to access the MS SQL Database directly via ODBC from PHP.

Regards

Gregor

Re: SAP & PHP - Newbie

Former Member — Tue, 02 May 2006 20:40:16 GMT

Tyler -- I remember the day I learned that there was another operating system for the VAX computer other than Unix (4.1BSD) -- quite a shock to me, but the main OS for the VAX was VMS. I think you're in that situation here.

SAP started with software for medium to large enterprises. The last version of that software is called "R/3," and the current version is called "mySAP."

For the small to medium enterprises we offer SAP Business One, which is the product your company appears to be using. Marilyn's reply should direct you in the right direction, but keep in mind that most information you read about SAP will be about R/3 and mySAP, and that "SAP" is often used as a synonym for mySAP (or R/3). Most information that applies to mySAP and R/3 will <b>NOT</b> apply to Business One.

Thanks, and

Re: SAP & PHP - Newbie

Former Member — Tue, 02 May 2006 20:41:02 GMT

I appreciate the quick responses.

So I should be able to use the ODBC to connect PHP to SAP. That should be good. I'm used to using MySQL with PHP so I'm sure I wont have troubles with MSSQL.

I shall continue my hunt for knowledge!

Thanks again.

Re: SAP & PHP - Newbie

gregorw — Wed, 03 May 2006 04:54:07 GMT

Hi Tyler,

don't forget to award some points to helpfull answers. You can do this by clicking on the radio Buttons in front of the answer.

Regards

Gregor

Re: SAP & PHP - Newbie

Former Member — Wed, 03 May 2006 08:03:46 GMT

hi Gregor,

concerning your advice, IMHO it's no good practice to access one application's data via direct database access from within another environment(except maybe in exceptional circumstances).

I do not know B1 at all, but I'd suggest to search for some kind of API or interfaces and accessing B1 from via them maybe using the php 'native interface' extension php_win32 if nothing else helps.

Just my 2 cents.

anton