SAP Connector for Microsoft .NET 3.0 released

Yesterday SAP made the renewed version 3.0 of the SAP Connector for Microsoft .NET (NCo) officially available. This version is the long awaited successor of NCo 2.0 - which still had a design-time and runtime dependency on .NET Framework 1.x and Visual Studio 2003.

With the NCo, it is possible to directly interoperate from a .NET consumer context with SAP RFC's. It is thus a different approach as with Duet Enterprise - in which the SAP/SharePoint interoperability is achieved via standards-based webservices. The Duet Enterprise services are provided by the SCL, which transparently encapsulates and shields the specifics of the SAP backend towards the SharePoint consuming side.

In the earlier versions the NCo used the SAP librfc32.dll to achieve the SAP/.NET binary interoperability. In NCo 3.0 the RFC protocol is fully re-implemented in the NCo itself. Main advantage is that there is no longer the dependency on the librfc32.dll being available on each .NET consuming system. Also this should result in better performance as there is no more marshalling required in .NET client runtime context from the managed .NET code to the unmanaged librfc32 invocation.

In the previous NCo versions the programming model was to generate at design-time .NET-based proxies in Visual Studio 2003 per SAP RFC that you intend to call. This involved a proxy method for the ABAP Function Module, and an individual proxy class for each structure or data table used in the RFC signature. In case of a change in the SAP backend, the implication is that it is required to regenarate the proxies, and rebuild plus deploy a new assembly for the re-generated code. In NCo 3.0, the RFC call pipeline is dynamically constructed. Whenever there is a change in the enclosed SAP back-end, the NCo on-the-fly adapts the internal RFC invocation. NCo 3.0 transparently shields the .NET consumer from modifications and upgrades in the SAP backend. However, this approach also has its downside. You are in effect developing against a weakly-typed integration API, much resembling the .NET reflection pattern. There is no compile-time validation nor protection for incorrect RFC invocations.

The NCo 3.0 can be downloaded from SAP Service Marketplace, including accompanying documentation.

SharePoint 2010 CMIS Connector

To enable content management interoperability between different CMS repositories, the OASIS organization defined the Content Management Interoperability Standard specification. Although a.o. Microsoft played a major role in the OASIS working group defining this proposed standard, up to now it did not provide a concrete and product-ready implementation of the CMIS specification for SharePoint 2007. There is only a reference/example implementation available on MSDN, with code download.

Apparently Microsoft decided to wait with active support of the CMIS specification for the next SharePoint version. For SharePoint Server 2010 Microsoft now packages a CMIS connector as part of the Administration Toolkit v1.0. The CMIS Connector for SharePoint provides a CMIS (Content Management Interoperability Services) interface over the top of SharePoint as well as a CMIS consumer Web Part that can be used to display content from other CMIS enabled repositories. [source: Microsoft SharePoint Teamblog] Or stated otherwise: via this CMIS Connector, SharePoint Server 2010 can both function as CMIS consumer of content stored in external repositories, and as CMIS producer of content stored within SharePoint lists and libraries.

Mind you...

• the CMIS Connector is not supported for SharePoint Foundation 2010
• and there is still only limited support of the CMIS standard by other CMS vendors; the real value of CMIS requires [at least] 2 to tango...

SAP announces a new release of the SAP .NET Connector

In 2003 SAP released the SAP .NET Connector (NCo) to enable communication between the .NET platform and SAP systems. The first NCo versions (1.0x, 2.0) were aimed at .NET 1.x (with support for Visual Studio .NET and later on VS 2003), and it remained at that level. This resulted in the overall conclusion that the NCo was considered 'dead', or at least strongly outdated (Future Support of NCo). This idea was re-enfored in May 2009 by 1) the advice of Juergen Daiberl to use webservices or WCF Lob Adapter in favor of NCo, and 2) a statement of SAP's Rima Rudnik-Sirich phrasing that 'ES Explorer is a successor of NCo'.

However, the truth (or weakness) of SAP Enterprise Services is that currently only a limited set is available, supporting a restricted subset of the SAP business processes functionality. There are alternatives to custom develop SAP/MS intergration whenever it is not standard provided: WCF on SAP webservices, WCF BizTalk Adapter on SAP BAPIs and RFC. And forthcoming is Duet Enterprise, with a positioning for interoperability and collaboration between SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 clients towards SAP processes and data.

And now SAP apparently decided to give new life to the NCo proposition. They have announced .NET Connector 3.0, to be released in December 2010. At first, this appears strange when you combine this announcement with the upcoming release of Duet Enterprise. However, Duet Enterprise is thus strictly scoped for interoperability between SharePoint plus Office 2010 and SAP environments. A renewed NCo will provide an additional alternative to communicate from other .NET application formats (e.g. WPF, WF, Services) to the SAP systems.