RFC

[Former Member]

Hallo,

did you ever get a message "Function Z_XXXX is not available" doing an RFC call to an external system?

We are trying to call an RFC to an AS/400 system (R/3 in installed on Linux server).

[RichHeilman]

I'm a little confused as to what you are trying to do here. Are you calling an Remote enabled function module? Then the external system must have the function module and hence, be an R/3 system. Function modules can only run inside of R/3 instances.

Regards,

Rich Heilman

[Former Member]

Hi Rich,

from R/3 I am trying to call (by an RFC enabled function) an external program on an external AS/400 server.

As far as I know RFC can execute programs on non R/3 systems.

...but when I test the function I get a short dump with "Function Z_XXXX not available" and we have the same error message on AS/400.

[RichHeilman]

So, you have a "Z" rfc enabled function module which you are trying to run on a remote system that does not have an R/3 instance?

Call FUNCTION 'Z_FUNCTION'
          destination 'AS400'.

Is this correct?

Regards,

Rich Heilman

[RichHeilman]

If you are using an RFC enabled function module and calling this from R/3, the destination must be an R/3 system. ABAP function modules can only run on ABAP systems.

Regards,

Rich Heilman

[Former Member]

Yes, that's it...

Thanks.

Kind Regards,

Mick

[RichHeilman]

Understand that when calling an RFC funciton module from one system to another, the calling system, does not even check for existance of the function module. It assumes that the function modules exists in the other system. Well, since the other system in this case is not an ABAP system, how can the function module exists. Exactly what code are you trying to run on the AS400 if it is not an ABAP system. What do you need to happen on the AS400. Do you need to kick off an CL, RPG, or COBAL program?

Regards,

Rich Heilman

[Former Member]

Hi Rich,

I should call an RPG program on AS/400... this program should give us back some data...

Regards,

Mick

[RichHeilman]

I don't think that you are going to be able to do this across systems. I know that you can write an ABAP program to access AS400 physical files that are not a part of R/3, but I think that the R/3 instances must be on that same AS400. Or be able to bounce across AS400s via a DDM file. We had interfaces when we first went live to bring data from AS400 legacy system to our R/3 instances which was running on a separate AS400. We used the IFS. We wrote RPG programs to extract the data and write it to PC files in the IFS of the AS400. Then we had ABAP programs on the other side read these text files from the IFS and process them directly.

Please remember to award points for any helpful answers. Thanks.

Regards,

Rich Heilman

Message was edited by: Rich Heilman

[Former Member]

I think that it should be possible, because on IBM RedBook there are some examples about it but... they do not work as they should...

[Former Member]

Hi Mike,

We are trying to do the same, calling RPG from ABAP via RFC. But don't know how to make the RPG callable by RFC. Your advice is highly appreciated

Tim