tclsap Overview

Introduction:
tclsap is a set of extensions to basic tcl and tk. The command extensions allow interactive or script based access to an SAP R/3 system through RFC calls.

There were two primary reasons that tclsap was developed. First was an effort to not require the use of C for all interface activities, and second was a desire to be able to quickly make changes to interfaces and immediately see the result. A result is the capability to, at least outside of SAP to fairly quickly put together interface programs for a variety of short term needs.

A secondary purpose in the development of tclsap was to have a mechanism by which CGI-BIN access to SAP systems could be provided, without being required to use C. An example of this is included in the distribution package.

tclsap Environment Considerations
While the tclsap extensions have been implemented only on HP Unix systems, there is no reason to believe that they would not work on any Unix system where the SAP RFC library is available.

It is possible that tclsap may also work on MS-DOS and MS-Windows systems. At present, the author does not plan to explore this avenue.

Prerequists
tclsap is based on tcl release 7.4 and tk release 4.0. No attempt was made to provide compatibility with earlier versions of tcl/tk. tclsap requires a copy of the SAP RFC library for the target computer system.

Note:

  1. ) The SAP libraries area apparently compiled with debugging flags set. You may wish to run strip before installing the executables.
  2. ) The SAP libraries are static only.
  3. ) tclsap is coded to require a sideinfo file. Code changes to Sap_Open.c are required if this is to be changed.

Disclaimers
The author makes no claims to competence in either tcl or tk. The example scripts shown almost certainly do not reflect an accomplished level of tcl/tk expertise. The author's first tcl efforts were after the tcl extensions were written (to test the extensions - of course :-) and these scripts are included with the distribution.

Copyright Notice
AUTHOR:
Garth Kennedy (garth@comm.mot.com or garth@mcs.net) Land Mobile Products Motorola Inc. Schaumburg, Ill.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE:
Copyright 1995 Motorola Inc.;
Permission to use, copy modify and distribute without charge this software, documentation etc. is granted, provided that this comment and the author's name is retained. Neither the author or Motorola assume any responsibility for problems resulting from the use of this software.


If there are questions about this document please direct them to Garth Kennedy (garth@mcs.net)

garth@mcs.net