j5 communicates with SAP during the following two "Fetching" steps when the Import from SAP button on the SAP PM Console page is selected:
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During "Fetching functional locations from SAP", the following call is made to SAP:
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BAPI_FUNCLOC_GETLIST.
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During "Fetching equipment from SAP", the following calls are made to SAP in this order:
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BAPI_EQUI_GETLIST
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RFC_READ_TABLE(EQUI) when not an initial run
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RFC_READ_TABLE(EQUZ)
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RFC_READ_TABLE(ILOA) multiple times
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In particular, when looking at the RFC_READ_TABLE(ILOA) in j5, it can be represented as follows:
read_table("ILOA", options=[{'TEXT': 'ILOAN IN ("123", "456")'}],
fields = ['MANDT', 'ILOAN', 'TPLNR', 'BEBER'])`
Where first the ‘EQUZ’ table is queried with: ‘DATAB <= SY-DATUM AND DATBI >= SY-DATUM AND AND HEQUI = ‘’‘. Then the IN clause is created by joining all the results of this query into the ILOAN field. The call to construct the ‘ILOAN IN’... part is done once while the call to read the ‘ILOA’ table (or any SAP table) is done many times but is batched. Thus, the method, for example, can be called once per 50 000 records. Batching is performed to prevent buffer errors from occurring where SAP runs out of memory if the entire amount is processed all at once.
This is done whether the RFC interface or the SOAP Web service is used.