Overview of InterfaceExtract Files

Overview of Interface/Extract Files

Many computer systems talk to each other through the sharing of files. Transmissions between SAP and third-party vendor computer systems are common. For instance, in my day-to-day job, I manage dozens of interfaces. An example is a file I send weekly to the unemployment office. My company uses a third-party vendor to handle unemployment processing. The file I transmit weekly contains a list of all associates who terminated and the date and reason why each one terminated. The third-party vendor uses this information to review and process potential claims for unemployment. Just emailing the vendor a printed list would require the vendor to manually look up a person each time a claim came in. To avoid all that work, the vendor demands that we send a file in a precise format so that it can be easily imported into the vendor's computer system.

When working with a vendor (as in the case of my company working with a third-party vendor on unemployment claims), the vendor provides what is referred to as a specification, or spec. The spec provides the precise details of how the file is supposed to look in its finished form. A very simple spec could look like the one shown in Table 8.1.

Table 8.1. Basic Sample Spec Layout for a Termination Report to an Unemployment Vendor

Position	Description of Data	Example
110	Company account number	1111112345
1118	Date of termination	01012006
1924	Personnel number of terminated associate	222111
2526	Reason code for termination	65
2727	Unemployment approval designator	X

This spec tells the developer creating the extract file exactly where each piece of data should reside in the file, based on the positional number. (By positional, I mean by reading through the spec, I know that the file requires the output of the company account number in positions 110 of the file. In other words, the first 10 characters of the report output would contain the company account number.) An example of what a single line of this extract would look like is 11111123450101200622211165X. If you were to count the position of each item in the extract, you would find that the position of each item matches exactly to the designation listed in the Position column. The following sections look at how you can use the SAP Query tool to create a positional report.