ABAP proxy specifics on a NetWeaver 7.3 system

Why this blog?

Some time ago, we upgraded our SAP PI 7.11 system to a new SAP PI 7.3 system. At the same time, the back end system was upgraded to a SAP NetWeaver BI 7.3.

A lot of communication has been set up using ABAP proxies.

During the upgrade, we struggled a lot setting up ABAP proxies on the 2 new environments. That the reason for writing this small blog.

Just to share what we have done to solve the problems we had.

Scope and context

A lot of how-to guides, SCN threads and documents are available concerning ABAP proxy configuration. I will not repeat all this in here.

I just want to highlight 2 things we faced:

• RFC connection to the Enterprise Services Repository

     Connection SAP_PROXY_ESR (with that exact name) must be created on the back end system.
     This seems to be mandatory on a NetWeaver 7.3 system. We got our inspiration from KBA
     1759641.

• It seems that SAP added more checks for (header) data being pushed to the back end system. That’s why we kept on receiving errors during our ABAP proxy test. The solution was, in our case, to push the namespace too. This was not the case on our SAP PI 7.11 system.
  In terms of ABAP mappings, this means we had to add extra coding:
           

     To be sure about the correct values for these parameters, go to the back end system, take
     transaction SPROXY and test the class.
     A template will be generated where test data can be filled in. Within that template, the
     expected header data is clearly displayed.

Questions or remarks?

If you have a (technical) question, feel free to send me an e-mail or post your thought or question.