Robot/SCHEDULE and SAP

Time flies. I can’t remember how long ago we developed a special Robot/SCHEDULE interface to SAP, but I think it's been around for about 8 years. If you have SAP on IBM i, UNIX, Linux, or Windows servers, you can use Robot/SCHEDULE and its SAP interface to launch Business Application Program Interfaces (BAPI) processes in SAP. (By the way, Help/Systems’ Skybot Scheduler will soon have an interface to SAP for those of you who run SAP on a non-IBM i server.)

Launch and Monitor

Not only does Robot/SCHEDULE launch these BAPI processes, it actually monitors them to make sure they end properly. Robot/SCHEDULE wants to be able to trigger the next step in dependency processing. Dependency processing is a big reason that customers flock to a product like Robot/SCHEDULE. Many customers need more capabilities than are available with SAP's built-in scheduler.

For instance, maybe you want to run a batch process on your IBM i server, then run another batch process in SAP in conjunction with a business process, and then wrap it all up with a backup. The SAP setup controls the IP address in your network used to talk with Robot/SCHEDULE. In Robot/SCHEDULE you create a new job that uses the RBTRUNSAP command interface.

Manage the Output

There are even parameters to convert SAP output to spooled files. This gives other Robot products, like Robot/REPORTS, the ability to manage SAP output—to archive it, convert it to PDF, or send it to another output queue in your network.

Launch, monitor, and manage—don’t forget to use Robot/SCHEDULE to control your SAP processes.