Java with SAP
A few years ago, SAP decided to decentralize its software and allow modules to stand alone. The company promotes the openness of its products through a program that SAP calls the CSP (Complementary Software Program). The Java programming language is particularly suited for this type of integration; SAP and other software providers merely provide a gateway into the core SAP system and then allow third-party applications to work from there. Using Java reduces the amount of development time SAP must do to support a wide range of platforms, so you can have a third-party application now running on Linux on, a Sun server, say, and have this application access an SAP system through Java (see Figure 1.1).
SAP has developed several tools to enable this type of integration. Though this book covers these tools in later chapters, the main package here is called the SAP Automation package, which includes the SAP JRFC (Java Remote Function Calls, also called the Java Class Library). This tool set enables programmers to access the entire SAP ERP system from a Java environment.
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