Hi all. We are using SAP Business Connector to map EDI messages into IDocs.

I read somewhere that ALE processing (via OutboundProcess) should manage by default a queue of documents that could not be sent successfully (e.g. because SAP server was down).

BC should try to send the failed IDocs for a certain period of time (30 minutes by default).

We tried to work it out but without success: if SAP is down, OutboundProcess fails with a runtime error.

Might anybody explain me if what I am trying to do is possible? If not, is there a way to achieve this result?

Thanks a lot,
-Luca-

Luca,

The process you are referring to is the transactional RFC (or queue RFC) functionality of SAP. What you are describing is true for SENDING Idocs FROM SAP. If the connection to the remote system is unavailable, SAP will store the Idocs in it’s tRFC or qRFC queue (SAP transaction SM58). It will automatically try to send the Idocs to the remote system for a specified number of retries over a specified interval (the retry interval and repetitions can be configured by one of the ALE or BASIS folks).

If the SAP server is down, the ALE layer definitely won’t be available, so you won’t be able to post Idocs until the connection is restored.

Regards,
Devan