conversions and interfaces

[Former Member]

what are conversions and interfaces?

Can you plz give me an overview of what are they and when do we use them?

Thanks a lot.

[RichHeilman]

In my case, both have to do with moving from a legacy system to SAP. Back when we were implementing it was my job to both write conversion programs and interface programs. The conversion programs were used to take the extract data from the legacy system and re-format for SAP and load the data into SAP. We used some custom programs using BDC, and a bunch of LSMW routines. Since we ran both systems in paralell for a while, we needed to pass data back and forth from SAP to legacy and vice vera. Here is where the interface programs can into play. We wrote a couple programs on both sides which took extracted data and did the transactions on both sides to bring them into sync.

Regards,

Rich Heilman

[Former Member]

Conversions : Moving the legacy data into SAP, this could be one time effort

Integration : This has something to do with business process integration between two different systems. This will be a ongoing process and this could happen in multiple business process.

Regards,

Ravi

note : Please mark all the helpful answers

[Former Member]

Conversions are one-time programs used to transfer data from the legacy system into SAP. For example, you can transfer master data like vendors, customers etc. Transactional data such as open purchase/sales order or open AP/AR invoices are also moved using various data-transfer techniques. LSMW is the most commonly used.

Interfaces are generally programs which are run on a periodic basis to transfer data between SAP and other external systems. For example, periodic data transfer between SAP and a external payroll system (such as ADP).

[Former Member]

The words were chosen for what they mean. A conversion means data that is converted from one format to another format and from one system to another. So when you first implement SAP, you are actually replacing some of your legacy systems, but you are not completely trashing the data. You still need some of that data from the systems that are being replaced. So you pull the data out of your legacy systems and put them on some files. You then want to load that data into your new SAP system. That is when you write some programs which will read that data and load it into SAP. Imagine you had a home grown purchasing system. You are now replacing all that with SAP. But until SAP goes live, you want to keep using your home grown purchasing system. So during go live, you want to transfer the POs from your legacy system to SAP. Now a PO in your legacy system may not have the same fields as a PO in SAP. So you convert the data.

Interfacing is connecting two or more different entities. In our case, it is connecting one or more systems with SAP. Now extending our previous example, you are replacing some legacy applications but there are some applications that you don't want to replace yet. You need to somehow pass data back and forth between SAP and these remaining systems. Data may be going one way or the other way or both ways. You will still need to do some data transformations/translations etc to make the data understandable to the receiving system. This will continue as long as you want to keep the systems running alongside SAP.

In short, conversions are written to load data into SAP onetime. These are typically file based.

Interfaces are written to exchange/update/send/receive data between SAP and other systems on an ongoing basis. These can be in many forms, file based, idoc based, real time(business connector, XI etc are useful in this), xml, and the list goes on.

[Former Member]

Hi,

Check this link

Regards,

AS