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Siebel Applications and SAP Terminology


Siebel applications and SAP use different terminology for the same objects. This guide always uses the Siebel application term when referring to Siebel software and data elements. (See Table 2.) It always uses the SAP term when referring to SAP software and data elements. When a description requires both terms, the Siebel application term occurs first and the SAP term occurs second. Example: Account/Customer.

Table 2. Siebel Applications and SAP Terminology
Siebel Applications Term
SAP Term

Account

Customer

Contact

Contact

Sales Order

Sales Order

Product

Material

This guide uses many abbreviations and specialized terms. Table 3 provides a list of many of these terms.

Table 3. Siebel Connector for SAP R/3 Terminology
Term
Meaning

ABAP

SAP programming language, Advanced Business Application Programming.

ALE

Application Link Enabling. This is SAP's technology for transmitting IDOC data containers to and from external applications using Transactional RFC.

BAPI

Business Application Programming Interface. This is the function call interface to SAP's business object methods. These function calls are often referred to as BAPIs. The terms BAPI and RFC are very similar and are often used in place of one another.

Dialog Process

An SAP process that handles immediate user activity and ABAP execution.

EAI

Enterprise Application Integration. A toolkit of Siebel-supplied utilities you can use to create data adapters between Siebel applications and external applications.

IDOC

Intermediate Document. This is the hierarchical data container used by ALE.

RFC

Remote Function Call. This is the technology used by SAP to allow external applications to call ABAP functions defined in SAP and allow SAP to call functions defined in external applications. The terms RFC and BAPI are very similar and are often used in place of one another.

Synchronous RFC

Two-way RFC call into or out of SAP.

tRFC

Transactional RFC. This is a one-way RFC call into or out of SAP with guaranteed delivery.

Table 4 contains a list of Siebel Connector for SAP R/3 business services and their common names in this document.

Table 4. Business Service Names
Name in Document
Business Service Name

BAPI Adapter

EAI SAP BAPI Adapter

BAPI Workflow Service

EAI SAP BAPI Workflow Service

IDOC Adapter

EAI SAP IDOC Adapter

IDOC MQ AMI Adapter

EAI SAP IDOC MQ AMI Adapter

IDOC MQ AMI Workflow Processor

EAI SAP IDOC MQ AMI Workflow Processor

IDOC Workflow Processor

EAI SAP IDOC Workflow Processor

IDOC Workflow Service

EAI SAP IDOC Workflow Service

Process Transaction Service

EAI SAP Process Transaction Service

Send Transaction Service

EAI SAP Send Transaction Service

tRFC BAPI Adapter

EAI SAP BAPI Adapter (tRFC)

tRFC BAPI Receiver

EAI SAP BAPI Receiver (tRFC)

Siebel Connector for SAP R/3