Brad Bansner
asked on
Advice on integrating a PHP website with SAP Business One
I have been tasked with creating a PHP website that interacts with a SAP Business One installation. I will need to do things such as:
• Pull inventory and customer data from SAP B1
• Push customer and new order data to SAP B1
The PHP website will be custom written. I have seen some integration tools that work with e-commerce platforms, such as Magento and WooCommerce, but for this project I will be writing the PHP myself.
I do not have any experience with SAP Business One.
I am hoping that SAP Business One has an API or other tools that will allow me to easily interface with it, and push/pull data in a secure manner. The company providing the SAP B1 says I can use "DI API Server".
I obviously need to familiarize myself with all of this, but I am hoping someone with some knowledge of both SAP B1 and PHP can give me a quick overview or some advice on how to proceed. Or at the very least, the assurance that all of this is doable, that writing my own PHP to interface with SAP B1 is not a horrible idea, etc.
Thank you!
• Pull inventory and customer data from SAP B1
• Push customer and new order data to SAP B1
The PHP website will be custom written. I have seen some integration tools that work with e-commerce platforms, such as Magento and WooCommerce, but for this project I will be writing the PHP myself.
I do not have any experience with SAP Business One.
I am hoping that SAP Business One has an API or other tools that will allow me to easily interface with it, and push/pull data in a secure manner. The company providing the SAP B1 says I can use "DI API Server".
I obviously need to familiarize myself with all of this, but I am hoping someone with some knowledge of both SAP B1 and PHP can give me a quick overview or some advice on how to proceed. Or at the very least, the assurance that all of this is doable, that writing my own PHP to interface with SAP B1 is not a horrible idea, etc.
Thank you!
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SymmetricDS is interesting, and would definitely help get the information out of SAP B1 that I need on the website, such as inventory, customer records, etc. I would still need a way to push new orders into SAP B1, I imagine I cannot do that by simply writing to the database, I would probably need to use the API for that, and therefore learn PHP COM?
No matter what, I'm going to be learning as I go, which is not necessarily a bad thing (I've learned many new skill sets that way). I just want to make sure I'm not going to be completely in over my head.
The company providing the SAP B1 is leaning towards a HANA database, which I am not familiar with, and is not listed on the SymmetricDS website as a compatible database, unless it is also called something else which I am not familiar with.
I know there are sync tools available for Magento and WooCommerce, but I am trying to stay away from those platforms.
Thanks for all the advice!
No matter what, I'm going to be learning as I go, which is not necessarily a bad thing (I've learned many new skill sets that way). I just want to make sure I'm not going to be completely in over my head.
The company providing the SAP B1 is leaning towards a HANA database, which I am not familiar with, and is not listed on the SymmetricDS website as a compatible database, unless it is also called something else which I am not familiar with.
I know there are sync tools available for Magento and WooCommerce, but I am trying to stay away from those platforms.
Thanks for all the advice!
Thinking about it, you will need COM to talk back to the API - SymmetricDS won't do that, and SAP will be unhappy with you if you just bung stuff into the database.
Why do you want to avoid Magento / WooCommerce? Just curious.
HANA is not just a DB, it is a proprietary SAP app server: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAP_HANA
Why do you want to avoid Magento / WooCommerce? Just curious.
HANA is not just a DB, it is a proprietary SAP app server: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAP_HANA
It does, however, drag you down to Windows.