Java and BAPI Technology for SAP (Prima Tech's Sap Book Series)

As a programmer, you need to know how to get the most out of using Java in the SAP environment. This book will show you how to tie key corporate data through the Internet; create, change, and display information via Java applets or executable code; and how Java and SAP interrelate. Java & BAPI Technology for SAP is a solid reference for beginning and intermediate users who are seeking help in this booming area.

User review
Not much BAPI specific information
There are only 13 pages which detail how to create your own BAPI and the extra 50 pages on BAPIs mearly list the BAPIs that SAP delivers with less documentation than SAP already gives in their BAPI transaction,,.

Unfortunately, I didn't have a chance to look at the book before buying it because I bought it at a large conference in between classes. If I had spent 5 minutes looking at it before I bought it, I wouldn't have. But since the previous ABAP book from the same publishing company was of very good quality, I bought it thinking it would be the same quality. Since buying the book last year I've only looked at it for about 20 minutes. I would not recommend.

User review
Waste of money
One of the junk books I;ve read lately. Poor content, structure and presentation. Lots of pages but no information. The authors/publishers tried very hard to increase the book size with all sorts of tricks. About thirty pages of the book are either blank or have chapter titles but no useful info. Not many useful code samples. The chapters on Java, OOP etc are really not necessary as there are lot of excellent tutorials/free books available on the internet. Very little information on the actual Java&BAPI as the title suggests. I;ve noticed a couple of errors in the Java related chapters. I will be very surprised if rest of the book is error free. Please do not waste your money by buying this POS.

User review
Java & BAPI Technology for SAP
I wish the authors put more content on the interaction of Java and BAPI, with more example codes on how to use Java to call BAPI etc. It would be perfect if they could use some real-world sample codes or lead their readers go through some complete exercise. Instead, the authors put lots of unnecessary information there, which we can find more in detail from other sources. We do not get what we really want from this book. I am surprised this book even got published.

User review
Java and BAPI Technology for SAP
Authors took so much effort in giving the basics of JAVA and RFC technology of SAP. ( as per their philosophy if people take the time to understand the basics well, then the advanced topics will come naturally). For SAP ABAP developers, this book has a good source of info to start with understanding about JAVA and its usage in taking SAP into Internet and e-commerce applications. I have enjoyed reading this book.

User review
Nice Java/SAP Examples, But No Web Enablement Alternatives
I found parts of this book interesting, some smaller parts even valuable. But there were large parts that, to me personally, were not at all valuable. One topic I found totally lacking, and suggest finding another source of information.

40% of the book was used for plain old Java or HTML stuff (unrelated to SAP). I didn't need this stuff because I have a nice Java book (Cay Horstman) already. And I'm beyond the summary level HTML found in the appendix. If you know C++, this relatively quick treatment of Java might work for you, but I'm thinking an experienced C++ coder would want a real meaty Java book. And if you are not already fairly familiar with an OO language, you're likely not going to get very far with the relatively light treatment of Java found in this book. So I'm not sure what the target audience is for this substantial chunk of this book (calculated after allocating-in the 20 page (!) table of contents, and other general pages).

A slightly larger percentage of the book was dedicated to SAP related topics which I consider useful. There's overview, positioning, definition and architecture stuff that's interesting and useful to someone trying to look outside of your SAP servers. The book offers to walk you through setting up SAP Automation, which might prevent a 'gotcha' or two. Then there are some 'simple' Java examples, and some more complex Java examples,,. all doing something with SAP. These could easily become the basis for a 'real' application. SAP offers examples in their documentation, and you can find some examples in some of the journals, but this book gives you quite a few examples that do different things with SAP. These example programs may also include a more complete description of what's happening in the code than other examples you may find.

Then the topic of web enabling comes up. We have an 'ITS' chapter, a 'this is why you need ITS' chapter, and a 'here are ITS headaches' chapter (I've used poetic license here, of course). Do yourself a favor and look closely at some of the alternatives before you jump into ITS. The information presented seems similar to SAP AG's propaganda, er, I mean view, but there is much more to consider than what's presented here. We get a few 'cons' for ITS, but the point is never driven home that ITS is basically architected just like SAP GUI, and in so doing, you have serious logon resource issues if you have more than a few users. So if you want to do anything 'serious' with web enabling, you need to look at HAHT Software, SilverStream, and Visual Edge. Right now HAHT (an SAP partner) is the only one with a development environment and runtime platform specifically targeted for R/3. And, get this, the tool codes Java for you. You just add a bit more Java to make it sing your tune. But check out these other packages against your requirements.

The final part of the book (17%) had some listings which I consider 'convenience' items, at best. This included listings of methods in the 'rfc' and 'rfc.exception' packages. I assume that there are javadocs out there, which cover this material. There might have been a little bit of wisdom thrown-in here, beyond what one would typically find in the javadocs (especially if SAP wrote the javadocs -- jab jab). The BAPI listing, though, seemed not to have much beyond what's in SAP.

So in summary, I think that the treatment of how one might proceed in web enabling SAP is not at all sufficient, and the large fraction of pages with plain old Java, and listings didn't do much for me. But the Java code examples that interact with SAP are valuable, and the background and architecture discussions provide a good foundation for a learner.

About me: I've been an SAP consultant since 2.2, and last year started coding in Java. I've been moving away from the traditional interfacing (ALE/IDOC), and have been moving into BAPI/RFC and web enabling SAP (with Java, of course!)