NotisApp Change Notification For SAP ERP Files

--This file is part of Notis open source  project. It is released under GPL V3
--For the project homepage, visit: http://sourceforge.net/projects/notis/

Notis - Change Notification For SAP ERP
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What is Notis?
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Notis is a platform that allows simple yet flexible publishing of change documents information in SAP ERP systems.
It provides several ways for business users to be better informed on changes to master data such as materials or customers.
Some of these methods include:
- Blog-like publishing of change documents, where users can browse, search and even comment on changes
- Push type notification of changes through emails
- RSS feeds of changes

What are the different components of Notis?
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Notis, like any other good platform, is built from 3 main components:
- Backend SAP ERP system, where master data is changed
- Federator, which is a set of PHP scripts that reads the changes from the backend ERP system, and later publishes them to the publishing platfrom.
- Publishing platform. We chose to use Wordpress because of it's flexibility, easy customization, and plugins.


Installing
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Step 1 - Install Wordpress. 
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You can install it wherever you want, it can be either on windows or Linux, does realy matter.
You can download it from: http://wordpress.org/download/ . Current version is 3.2.1

Step 2 - Install the 'Post Notification' wordpress plugin
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This plugin will provide us with all the email registration and notification functionality. 
It's very simple to install a plugin. Here's how: http://codex.wordpress.org/Managing_Plugins

Step 3 - Initialize the Notis Mysql DB
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Notis reads all changes from the backend ERP system and writes them to a staging area - a Mysql DB. It then later reads that DB
and publishes the changes to the Wordpress installation.
You need to have a Mysql DB dedicated for this purpase. Again, it can be any OS or even any version, as long as it is Mysql 5.
Once you have that DB up and running, you should import the script build_database.sql. It will build 2 tables, one for the changes, and 
the other for the log.

Step 4 - Create a customer function module on the backend SAP ERP
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Notis relies on the standard function module 'CHANGEDOCUMENT_READ_RANGES' to read change documents (no stand BAPI from some reason).
We provide with a wrapper function module that is RFC enabled. All the code is found in two files:
-zmm_changedocument_read_ranges.abap
-lzrfctop.abap

Step 5 - Install SAPRFC
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You need to get SAPRFC up and running. You can download it from: http://saprfc.sourceforge.net/ . Any version will do the trick.

Step 6 - Setup the Federator scripts
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Two PHP scripts are in charge of reading the changes from the SAP ERP system and publishing them to the wordpress installation:

- getchangedocs.php: This script calls the zmm_changedocument_read_ranges FM through RFC, and writes the results to the Mysql DB.
In should run from a PHP interpeter that has SAPRFC installed. It should also have RFC access to the SAP ERP server, so the TCP/IP ports
should be acessible from where the script is running. The script should have some type of cron running it, every few minutes or hours.

- createwppost.php: This script reads the Mysql DB, fetching all changes that were not yet published, and publishes them to the
 wordpress installation. Running this script does not require SAPRFC, but the script should have access to the Mysql database server,
 as well as to the wordpress installation.