A couple of weeks ago, I had to create a custom EDI party trough code.
I noticed that the information provided on this topic was rather small and that other people were experiencing the same problem as well.
After some research I did on this topic, I discovered it’s actually rather easy to do these kinds of modifications through code.
Below you can find an example on how to create and modify your EDI Party.

Prerequisites

You will need to add references to following assemblies in order to create and modify an EDI Party trough code.

These assemblies can be found in the BizTalk installation folder.

Add new Party

The first step is to add a new party to your BizTalk Group.
Below is an example how to add it through code, but it’s perfectly possible to add this through the BizTalk Administration Console.

Modify the Party Settings

The party you just created will be used to create a new partner.
After that you can tweak and modify every setting needed for your Party/Partner.
There are tons of possibilities to adjust, but below you can see some basic modifications I did.

The result

When we open the BizTalk Administration console, we can view the result.

The source code of my example can be found here.
EDIPartyManagement.zip (18.43 kb)

Glenn Colpaert, CODit

In this post I will talk about setting up a trace for the WCF-Adapter. This post should be a good addition to some previous posts I made about the WCF-Adapter.

Communicating with SAP through WCF : Send and Receive Ports

Communicating with SAP through WCF : Generate SAP schemas

1.  Tracing within the Adapter

Add the following to the configuration section of your BizTalk configuration file, BTSNTvc.exe.config which is present under <system drive>:\Program Files\Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006:

<system.diagnostics>

    <sources>

      <source name="Microsoft.ServiceModel.Channels" switchValue="Warning">

        <listeners>

          <add name="eventlog" />

        </listeners>

      </source>

      <source name="Microsoft.Adapters.SAP" switchValue="Warning">

        <listeners>

          <add name="eventlog" />

        </listeners>

      </source>

    </sources>

    <sharedListeners>

      <add name="eventlog" type="System.Diagnostics.EventLogTraceListener" initializeData="APPLICATION_NAME"/>

      </sharedListeners>

    <trace autoflush="false" />

  </system.diagnostics>

This will enable Warning level tracing (Errors + Warnings).  Replace APPLICATION_NAME with the name of your application as you want it to appear in the event viewer. Now you can see the errors and warnings - even the ones that were thrown to SAP.

If not possible to write to event log or if too bulky, then alternatively, you can put the following instead of the listeners “event log” if you want to log to a file. You will then need the tracing viewer (see below):

<add name="xml" type="System.Diagnostics.XmlWriterTraceListener"

   traceOutputOptions="LogicalOperationStack"

          initializeData="C:\log\WCF\AdapterTrace.svclog" />

ATTENTION: Trace files can become huge. Remember to stop tracing once issues have been solved.

2.  Tracing the Adapter and the LOB Application

To diagnose issues that you suspect are related to the LOB application, you must enable tracing for communication between the adapter and the LOB application. Adapters also depend on LOB tracing (client/server side) to access this information. The SAP adapter enables adapter clients to turn on tracing within the SAP system by specifying the "RfcSdkTrace" parameter in the connection URI. You must specify this parameter to enable the RFC SDK to trace information flow within the SAP system. For more information about the connection URI, see The SAP System Connection URI.

This parameter is specified in the SAP binding URI of the BizTalk WCF adapter:

Additionally, you can also create an RFC_TRACE environment variable that sets the level of tracing for the RFC SDK. RFC_TRACE is an environment variable defined by SAP and is used by the RFC SDK. If this variable is not defined or is set to 0, the RFC SDK tracing level is bare minimum. If the variable is set to 1 or 2, the tracing level is more detailed.

RFC_TRACE = 2
RFC_TRACE_DIR = C:\log\LOB

Note: Irrespective of whether the RFC_TRACE environment variable is set, the RFC SDK tracing is enabled only if setting the "RfcSdkTrace" parameter to true in the connection URI (see in STEP 2). The value of this environment variable solely governs the level of RFC SDK tracing. If RfcSdkTrace is set to true, the message traces between the adapter and the SAP system are copied to the “system32” folder on your computer. To save the RFC SDK traces to some other location, you can set the RFC_TRACE_DIR environment variable. For more information about these environment variables refer to the SAP documentation.

3.  Viewing the Traces

You can use the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Service Trace Viewer tool to view the traces. For more information about the tool, see "Using Service Trace Viewer for Viewing Correlated Traces and Troubles" at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=91243 .

Enjoy!

Glenn Colpaert 

In order to successfully setup communication with SAP. You have following configurations.
In terms of the SAP part you need to have following things on SAP side:

·         A SAP user with suitable access

·         A RFC connection (This will specify the ‘listening’ program running on BizTalk. (SAP transaction SM59)

·         A tRFC port which uses the RFC connection defined above. (SAP transaction WE21)

There is also some setup in terms of messages. Assignment of messages to receiving/sending partner…
But this would be down to the SAP team for doing this sort of implementation.

The most important thing from BizTalk point of view is the configuration of the Send and Receive ports.
There for you need to first generate the correct SAP schemas.  (See blog post: “Communication with SAP through WCF custom adapter – Generate SAP schemas”).

Note: When generating the SAP schemas, BizTalk will provide you with the correct bindings to setup the Send/Receive Ports.
On the other side, it’s better to cross-check that configuration to be sure that you have the correct setup.

Send Ports

Your URI should look like this:

sap://CLIENT=[SAPClientID];LANG=[LANG];@a/[ServerName]/[SystemID]?RfcSdkTrace=False&AbapDebug=False
ex: sap://CLIENT=235;LANG=EN;@a/10.80.32.3/00?RfcSdkTrace=False&AbapDebug=False

In the SOAP Action header you should specify the action, this action you can find in the configuration of your generated SAP schema. 

Double check the configuration of the URI and do not forget to add your credentials to avoid logon problems. 

Receive Ports

Your URI should look like this:

sap://CLIENT=[SAPClientID];LANG=[LANG];@a/[ServerName]/[SystemID]?ListenerGwHost=[ListenerGWHost]&amp;ListenerGwServ=[ListenerGWService]&amp;ListenerProgramId=[ListenerProgramID]
ex: sap://CLIENT=235;LANG=EN;@a/10.80.32.3/00?ListenerGwHost=10.80.32.3&amp;ListenerGwServ=SAPGW00&amp;ListenerProgramId=BIZTALK_CODIT

The SAP team has to provide you with the correct variables. Again, do not forget to add your credentials to avoid logon problems.
If you still have issues with enlisting your Receive Locations you should paste following entries in c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\services.
 Services.txt (3.71 kb)

Enjoy !

Glenn Colpaert 

In order to send and receive messages from SAP you need to have the correct schemas generated from SAP.
To successfully generate those schemas you need following prerequisites installed.

·         BizTalk - SAP LOB Adapter SDK SP2

·         BizTalk – Adapter Pack 2.0

·         BizTalk – SAP client libraries 

Create a new project in Visual Studio. Click “Add Generated Items”. 

Select “Consume Adapter Service”.

Select the “sapBinding” and press “Configure”.
Configure the URI properties (application server host, the gateway host, the gateway service, the system number, the client, programid) and credentials provided.

When the configuration is finished press the “Connect button”.
In the following sceen you can Select Client (Outbound operations) or Server (Inbound Operations), then you can select the IDOC you want.
Be sure to select the correct version of the IDOC. Select the Send or Receive operation and click “OK” to generate the schema.

 Generating a schema will provide you with the correct schemas and a binding file that you can use to setup the receive or send port.
(See blog post: “Communication with SAP through WCF custom adapter – Send and Receive Ports”)

Enjoy !

Glenn Colpaert