What's New in Release 46D
October 2000, SAP AG
The Release 46D is an update to the earlier Releases. This latest release of the DCOM Connector provides additonal interfaces to support both tRfc and qRfc. Using the Object Builder shipped with this release, a developer has the choice to generate tRfc or qRfc COM components that internally issue SAP tRFC or qRFC calls to R/3 respectively. For more information on tRFC or qRFC, please refer to the RFCSDK help files. In addition, this release of the RFCSDK includes COM for ABAP. This is a generic RFC service that enables the invocation of any COM automation interface from within R/3 using standard 'CALL FUNCTION ... DESTINATION' semantics.
What's New in Release 46C
March 2000, SAP AG
Windows 2000 Support
This release has been tested on Windows 2000 Professional and Windows 2000 Server.
What's New in Release 46B with Windows 2000 Support
January 2000, SAP AG
COM+ Support on Windows 2000 RC1
This patch solve the following Windows 2000 related problems:
Dim Session as New SAPSession
Dim oFoo as SalesOder
Set oFoo = Session.CreateInstance("SAP.SalesOrder.1")
Other Bug Fixes
ISAPCatalog.GetTypes fails when it is called second time for the same object;
Memory access violation in MTS if the R/3 logon fails;
ISAPSession.Logon returns 1 instead of -1 if the call succeeded;
Installation
This patch can be installed over previous installation of Relaese 46A or 46B. However, the previous installation of 45B must be manually removed prior to installing this patch.
What's New in Release 46B
November 1999, SAP AG
Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 VCM Integration
The facilities for integrating SAP DCOM Connector with Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 Visual Components Management is added in this release. The installation of this features is optional and requires a local installation of the Visual Studio 6.0 VCM and the accesss to a Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 database via ODBC (local or remote). For more information on VCM integration, please read SAP DCOM Connector and Microsoft Visual Component Manager.
Installation
This release can be installed over the previous installation of Release 46A. However, any earlier version of the DCOM Connector should be manually removed prior to installing this release.
What's New in Release 46A
May 1999, SAP AG
Here is a overview of the new components, enhancements and bug fixes in SAP R/3 DCOM Connector release 4.6A.
Session Component
A new component template called SAP Session is introduced in this release to help the developer to generate a special type of DCOM Connector component. By using a session component generated from this template, a client can tie multiple DCOM Connector business objects together in one R/3 session. A session component implements the ISAPSession interface, which in turn, inherits ISAPConnector interface. A client uses the CreateInstance method of ISAPSession to create one or more related business objects within a session and commits the work on the target R/3 system if it is required.
Only in-process DCOM Connector business objects can be created through session object. This means that one can only create objects in the same package as the session object or in library packages . However, the library package approach is not recommend, because it forces the security check to be turned off. Instead, installing a session component for each MTS package is recommended. The Object Builder is also enhanced to support the generation and installation of the session component .
A sample session component CCSession will be installed in the sample package. The updated VB sample Sales shows how to use session object in the client program. For Visual Basic programmers, it is good practice to declare the created objects as specific types so that the IntelliSense functionality still works while they use CreateInstance method of session object instead of New.
ISAPConnector Interface Enhancement
The ISAPConnector Interface has been enhanced in this release to allow the client programmer on a per business object basis to indicate the desire to keep or free the connection resource after method invocation: KeepSAPContext == TRUE/FALSE (the default is TRUE, which disallows connection pooling). In previous release, it can be done only by manually altering the generated C++ code and adding a MTS API call SetComplete() at the end of each method that accessed R/3 resources.
It is important to note that if the bapi requires a CommitWork, the programmer MUST have KeepSAPContext set to TRUE. Hence bapi's with CommitWork always require at least two round trips to R/3 to do their work. Customers should consider creating a wrapper RFC that does both within R/3 where possible.
The new method RollbackWork is the counterpart of CommitWork. It works only when KeepSAPContext is set to TRUE.
Method CommitWorkAndWait is not implemented in this release.
Another new method GetConnectionAttribute allows the client programmer to retrieve the current RFC connection information, e.g. the release of the target R/3 system.
SAPCatalog Interface
In addition to the default interface and ISAPConnector interface, all components generated with the new Object Builder shipped with this release implement and expose the ISAPCatalog interface. Through this interface, the clients or development tools can explore the meta information on the components, which includes the meta data of the classes, interfaces, methods and parameters. For example, a complete listing and description of structure and table parameters can be retrieved via this interface.
Installation
The previous installation of any earlier version of the DCOM Connector should be manually removed prior to installing this release.
The setup script shipped with the previous release is replaced by a setup program (..\ccpak\ccsetup.exe). The component PROXYGEN.DLL is moved from the SAP R/3 DCOM Connector package to the newly added package SAP DCOM Connector Object Builder. The installation of the Object Builder package and Samples package are now optional. The separation of the core components and the optional components may simplify the configurations for different environments, e.g. development environment and production environment.
Object Builder User Interface
The DHTML script and other ActiveX controls used by Object Builder user interface are now replaced by a single control due to some limitations of the script language and the strong dependency on these ActiveX controls. This control can be placed in any control container, e.g. in the Internet Explorer or in a VB form.
Using DCOM Connector without MTS
Beginning with this release, the DCOM Connector and the business components generated with Object Builder can be installed and used on a machine without MTS installation. In this case, the RFC connection pooling and other MTS features are not available.
Explicit Default Destination
The default destination NONE in the previous release is removed in this release. In addition, the Object Builder will no longer set the default destination of a generated component to the R/3 System from which the meta data was retrieved. If desired, the default destination of a component can be explicitly defined using the DCOM Connector Management Console.
Silent Build Process
No Command Prompt window will pop up during the compiling and linking steps of the build process.
Namespace Support for R/3 Function Modules and Data Dictionary Structures
It is possible to generate proxy objects from R/3 Function Modules which belong to a namespace. In that case, the namespace will be removed in the corresponding method name of the generated proxy class. Data Dictionary (DDIC) structures might also belong to a namespace.
Building Proxy Classes from Function Modules
These proxy classes can now be generated from R/3 systems with release 3.0C onwards. Building BAPI proxy classes still assumes a R/3 system release 3.1G or greater.
Detailed Error Description during the Build Process
If the build process fails, a detailed description of the error will now be displayed.
Building Debug Versions
For debugging purposes, you can build a debug version from the generated source files very easily. Just create a new Visual C++ project from the generated Makefile and in project settings add BUILD=D to the build command line. Visual C++ will then create a Debug version of the DLL. A detailed description can be found in the documentation of the DCOM Object Builder.
Bug Fixes
"User ID for user in role is not valid" error during
installing DCOM Connector on non-English Windows NT;
Memory access violation in MTS if the R/3 logon fails or other communication
error occurs;
Memory leaks in generated DCOM Connector component if a method contains
Recordset parameter with input AND output attribute;
More than one RFC resource dispenser instances may be created in a single
MTS process and it prevents the efficient reuse of the RFC connections;
Randomly "out of memory" error while monitoring active processes which
host DCOM Connector objects;