What is the best way to connect SAP ECC6 EHP8 with SQL Anywhere 17

[fvestjens]

Hi,

One of our customers is moving from an old version of SAP to SAP ECC6 EHP8. Data is currently being transferred using Biztalk 2006 between the old SAP version and SQL Anywhere 9.0. SQL Anywhere is the database used by hour windows application.

Since SQL Anywhere has moved to SAP I was wondering whether there is another/better way to connect SAP with SQL Anywhere.

[Vlad]

I think one day I will become the architect, because I have my own view on this topic.

Your question cannot be answered (at least by me :), but yes, I still will become the architect). I have to know anything about the data/server/solution:
1. How many tables;
2. How many records (roughly);
3. Regular sync, or immediately when the data is modified;
4. One-way or two-way sync;
5. Any preference to the protocol (HTTPS, RFC, Mobilink, Replication stuff such as SLT. Oops, SLT is not the protocol, but the solution);
6. One-time task, or continuous replication;
7. SAP software or something what SA provides;
8. Time & money & supportability;
9. oh, I have forgot to add - are there any performance KPIs being defined?
10. is downtime planned?

[fvestjens]

1. 4 tables; write to 2 tables; read from 2 tables
2. 1200 new records per day SAP to SQL 1400 new records per day SQL to SAP
3. Regular sync.
4. One way
5. Not looking for replication. Records needs to be pushed from SAP to SQL and records need to be pulled from SQL to SAP
6. At this moment task starts every 5 minutes or so
7. Because SAP is starting data communication I guess SAP software
8. No issue
9. No KPI's defined
10. Yes, only when update on SAP is done.

[Vlad]

Ok, thank you for your comment. I like it.

These are the solutions that I see:

1. You can use the software that is the part of SA (e.g. Mobilink or SQL remote). This will allow you to synchronize data between two (if we can admit that none of the DBs will be used).

2. SAP provides solutions for the replication purposes (the same topic how people migrate their data to SAP HANA). E.g. you can look at this link (aware of marketing info):
   https://www.sap.com/product/data-mgmt/data-replication-integration.why-sap.html
   https://www.sap.com/community/topic/lt-replication-server.html

3. You can have something based on SAP PI + SAP ECC + Some coding. Imagine an interesting solution - you expose data from SAP ECC to the "world" using RFC, SAP PI transforms this data to whatever you like (XML, JSON, maybe direct JDBC connection) and push this stuff to SqlAnywhere.

4. Something simple, but custom: e.g. you write a small application (or the web service that is hosted by SQL Anywhere) and you push from ABAP new records every 5 minutes. Sounds reliable, simple, but custom. And I forgot to add -> quite cheap, because this is in-house development, and you have already had two servers and thus you do not need other licenses.

I hope other forum members can correct me, if they think my proposal requires further polishing.