Skip to Content
Technical Articles
Author's profile photo Ratul Chakraborty2

Exchange rate Market data feed into S/4 – Data provider FINISS

It is very crucial for any business to import Market data into the system, to perform different financial transactions. Market data, like Exchange rates, Securities, Interest rates, Indexes etc, are fed into the system daily from Market data providers.

There are 2 ways to maintain Market data, e.g. Exchange rate, in SAP:

  • Maintain exchange rates manually from the transaction OB08
  • Maintain automatically from Market data providers using File interface or Data feed

Here we will discuss on the Data feed approach.

Market Data provider: FINISS

Prerequisites: Initial Connection check

Step 1:

Before you start with the customizing, you should check if your SAP system has access to the internet. The first test checks the connection to SAPHTTPA and the correct configuration. Execute the program RSHTTP05 using the transaction SE38.

The output should look like the following. If not, please refer to the SAP note 164203.

Step 2:

Test the internet connection using program RSHTTP20 (HTTP GET TEST). Run the program RSHTTP20 from SE38.

Use the following parameters:

URI:     http://www.finiss.de/refinery/do/portfolio/download?portfolioId=3550

RFC Destination: SAPHTTPA

User:   SAPTEST

Password:  saptest

The result should look like this.

The important part is the message “200 OK”.

You may encounter the following error:

The error message NiHostToAddr proxy error: NIEHOST_UNKNOWN means that the SAP system cannot resolve the URL www.finiss.de because DNS is not working on this server. You need to speak with someone from your SAP Basis team to fix this. Alternatively, you can use the IP address to continue the connection tests.

You can rerun the program RSHHT20 with the following parameters:

URI:     http:// 89.202.107.67/refinery/do/portfolio/download?portfolioId=3550

RCF Destination: SAPHTTPA

User:   SAPTEST

Password:  saptest

In production you can also use the IP address but it is recommended to use DNS on the SAP server.

Another error message could be:

The error message Host www.finiss.de (or 89.202.107.67 if IP address is used) Port 80 error : NIECONN_REFUSED means that the SAP system is not able to connect to the internet. In most cases the request is blocked by your internal firewall! Please contact your network team and request an OUTGOING connection on PORT 80 to the URI www.finiss.de (and/or the IP address 89.202.107.67)

To be sure that the problem is not related to FINISS you can also run RSHTTP20 with the following parameters:

 

URI:     http://www.google.com

RFC Destination: SAPHTTPA

User: (empty)

Password: (empty)

The result should be the same.

Do NOT continue till the problems are fixed and you get the HTTP status 200 on RSHTTP20 (HTTP GET TEST).

Request 4 weeks’ free trial:

Once the RSHTTP20 test is successful You can request a test login for a 4 weeks’ free trial from FINISS.

Contact SUPPORT@FINISS.COM for further support.

 

Configuration in S/4:

 

Technical Datafeed configuration in the Customizing

For the internet access, SAPHTTPA is used. The technical details of this component are defined in the note 164203.

The following steps must be completed in the customizing: (Transaction SPRO)

  • Define Datafeed name

 

Create a new Data provider with the name “FINISS”.

 

  • Assign Datafeed RFC Destination

 

The RFC destination to FINISS will be created by BASIS team.

 

  • Define Proxy configuration

For the internet access, in some cases there must be a proxy defined. If you don`t need a proxy user, you must skip this step.

 

  • Define Internet settings for WEB access

 

 

Please use the URI, the user and password provided by FINISS. If You don’t have these information, you can test the following setting:

 

URI: http://www.finiss.de/refinery/do/portfolio/download?portfolioId=3550

User: SAPTEST

PW: saptest

 

There is a known bug, that the password is not fully deleted (only by overwriting the entry). Mark the password field and delete the entry, do this 5 times! After this, check the table VTB_DFDEST, the fields should be empty:

MANDT  210

RFEEDNAME FINISS

RWORKMODUS 1

RDEST NONE

RPROG TB_DATAFEED_INTERNET_ACCESS RBUPDEST

URI  http://www.finiss.de/refinery/do/portfolio/download?portfolioId=3550

FOREIGN USER

FOREIGN PASSWD

Now You can customize the login information from FINISS.

 

Customizing the Application

  • Define data source for data feed, Data provider FINISS

Add “DDS” & “IDS_SELECTFEED” here for Data provider FINISS.

 

  • Create translation table using R/3 master data

With this action, the currency definitions from the SAP master data are stored in the table. If You already have the currencies defined in TCURR You might skip this section:

Enter Name = “FINISS” and Data source = “DDS”.

 

  • Define currencies

Now the currency pairs must be mapped with the instrument names (list provided by FINISS).

 

Double click on the lines to VIEW & EDIT.

You must enter the following information from the FINISS file into the fields. Here is the sample file from FINISS.

Data Provider – FINISS

Instrument – USDAMDREF=BOI

Data Source – DDS

Property – MID





Same steps must be done for all INTRUMENT classes. This information will be provided by the Market Data provider; in our case it is FINISS.

  • Test program for Datafeed Customizing

 

 

When you EXECUTE, the following screen will appear.

 

** This is an INTERNAL test, so you will not see any rates on the output.

 

Market data request from the FINISS server

Use the transaction TBD4 to request market data. Data provider is FINISS.

After successful execution, exchange rates will be read from FINISS and updated in S/4. Here is the log.

If you see an error like this:

HTTP GET Test HTTP/1.1 407 Proxy Authentication Required (The ISA Server requires authorization  to fulfill the request. Access to the Web Proxy service is Via: 1.1 NOR1S007

Proxy-Authenticate: Negotiate

Proxy-Authenticate: Kerberos

Proxy-Authenticate: NTLM  …..

 

please check the proxy settings.

 

Create job for Market data request

You can define the Job variant in the Define Variant step and the job can be scheduled using the Schedule Jobs option.

 

 

Validation of the Exchange rates:

Here is the information that was loaded.

 

Information Reference:

http://www.finiss.com/2.html

I hope you find it useful, this blog. Please, please feel free to suggest any correction or modification. Let's help each other to learn better.

Cheers.

Assigned Tags

      4 Comments
      You must be Logged on to comment or reply to a post.
      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hello, good explanation, however, I believe this is just the evolution of an existing feature on transaction TBD4 that was available in FSCM/TRM from ECC EHP7 or above.

      My only complaint is that the "feed" is a 3rd party vendor that has already digested the market information a bit and exposed a more simple format in the first place. (Such as your example of FINISS which already handles currencies from Bloomberg...but only that).

      In several customers I've been trying to integrate a data feed directly connected to the London Metal Exchange (LME), PLATTs or Thomson-Reuters with little success. Mainly because for commodities you often have several price points during a single day (opening, close, settled, etc) and these RICs often have additional attributes that make it difficult to filter prior to the data pull. Every data pull is charged by the data provider and can escalate quickly.

      Even more so, LIBOR rates are important for foreign trade and long term sales exchanges, and loading them manually is prone to error.....causing major impact on business relations.

      I really have to wonder why the market feed providers have not approached SAP (or vice-versa) to create a standard plug-in solution for this critical business operation.

      Author's profile photo Ratul Chakraborty2
      Ratul Chakraborty2
      Blog Post Author

      Hi, Thanks for the information. I also wonder why SAP can't import such data directly from the market, may be because of the additional cost, may be because only registered Market data providers can access this information directly.

      Author's profile photo Adrian Wilder
      Adrian Wilder

      Hi! You can also visit www.ob08.net, where you can find Exchange Rates from over 100 different Central Banks and you can test the solution totally-free for 90 days.

      Author's profile photo Ratul Chakraborty2
      Ratul Chakraborty2
      Blog Post Author

      Thanks for the info Adrian. Cheers!