Make SAP Report available via RFC

Question

One customer wants to access a SAP report via RFC.

Steps:

1. Third party application connects to SAP via RFC
2. RFC call gets transmitted
3. SAP runs the report
4. SAP returns the report.

How can this be implement the part inside SAP?

I am using PyRFC as client library. But AFAIK this does not matter at all for this question. This question is only about the server part inside SAP.

In this case it is the report RM07MLBS which should be made available via RFC.

Answer 1

You need an ABAPer to make a function to you, I think there's no way without it.

If you have a ABAPer just do something like this:

SUBMIT <REPORT_NAME> ... EXPORTING LIST TO MEMORY AND RETURN.

CALL FUNCTION 'LIST_FROM_MEMORY'
  TABLES
    listobject = t_listobj.

CALL FUNCTION 'LIST_TO_ASCI'
  TABLES
    listasci           = t_ascilist
    listobject         = t_listobj.

Now you have the list in ASCII format, you can convert it to what you want.

Another way is send the report result to spool, get the spool and convert it to HTML/PDF.

To convert Spool you can use this functions:

RSPO_RETURN_ABAP_SPOOLJOB
RSPO_RETURN_SPOOLJOB_DAT
RSPO_RETURN_SPOOLJOB_HTML

Answer 2

The best way to do this would be to wrap your report in a bespoke Function Module that is RFC Enabled, then give them access to run that RFC Function Module.

Answer 3

In a perfect world, you'd have the report logic encapsulated in an abap class or a dedicated function module and use that as the basis for both your report and the RFC calls. But if this is a standard SAP report and SAP themselves weren't nice enough to provide said function module, you may not have this option.

I don't think this is the best solution for your request, but just to add another option to the ones already mentioned in other answers: the commercial product Theobald Xtract Universal can execute reports and return the results using several available destination types. Xtract is a windows service that offers connectivity to several target database types as well as a http based result stream. It isn't cheap though, and it essentially only can connect to SAP Netweaver based systems as its data source (at least S/4 is already supported). Target destinations have to be purchased extra, but at least not per system, only per destination type (Oracle, MySQL, MSSQL...).

https://theobald-software.com/en/xtract-universal/

Xtract Universal uses a number of customer function modules to execute the report in the target system, catch the output and return it, essentially as a wall of text. You'll have to parse that result yourself, you won't get a nice pre-parsed table with data in it.

Just to make sure there's no misunderstanding about a possible conflict of interest: I don't work for Theobald, but we are a paying customer and use Xtract for our own data extractions. It is very simple to use, can be executed in scripts, but as said, just does that one job.

Answer 4

As far as I know there is a limited possibility to trigger a report via a rfc-enabled function module. Otherwise try triggering a transaction (based on your report) via function module. Also check: https://archive.sap.com/discussions/thread/811196

I dont think that you are able to respond the report result to your third party system.

From consulting perspective I would recommend running the report periodically, write results in a table, fetch data from table (from third party system) via RFC-enabled function module.