There is no pre-defined schema for the ERP MA. Instead, the ERP MA Configuration Tool is used to generate a (connector space) schema file. The ERP MA can be used to manage any object type and set of attributes as long as the appropriate BAPIs for managing these attributes exist and are exposed in your SAP environment. While creating the ERP MA, the schema file that is generated by the ERP MA Configuration Tool needs to be referenced. See the section on configuring an MA for more details on using a schema file.

Note
The schema-file is not a MA and therefore cannot be directly imported as an MA. When creating the MA, the wizard will prompt you to supply this schema-file to be used as a template for the new MA.

The ERP MA can be considered a flexible engine whose actions are controlled by an accompanying configuration file. The ERP MA Configuration file contains information about what object types and operations are defined for the ERP MA as well as what functions are required to execute an operation. When the ERP MA runs, the MA attempts to use a configuration file with the same name as the instance of the ERP MA.

There are differences in the BAPIs amongst different versions of SAP. In addition, each SAP implementation may have a different set of BAPIs exposed through RFC. Also, each SAP implementation may include customized BAPIs. The ERP MA does not assume that a certain set of BAPIs are available. Instead, the ERP MA Configuration Tool utilizes a discovery process to obtain a list of available BAPIs. The first time you connect to a SAP environment through the ERP MA Configuration Tool, the discovery process is launched. Discovery retrieves the set of available BAPIs and caches them for future use.

Note
By default, the set of BAPIs that are discovered are limited to BAPIs that contain "BAPI_USER*", "BAPI_EMPL*", "BAPI_PERS*", "BAPI_HR*", "Z*", "Y*". This filter for Discovery can be modified through the ERP MA Configuration Tool. Discovery may take between several minutes and several hours depending on the specified filter.

The BAPI included in the template for the employee object type and full import operation (BAPI_EMPLOYEE_GETDATA) retrieves detailed information for employees in a single BAPI call. Depending on the number of employees in your environment and the specs for your SAP server, it may not be possible to return the full set of data in a single BAPI call. In this case, pagination should be enabled to break the full import into multiple searches (i.e. multiple BAPI calls.) Your SAP administrator should be able to assist in determining if pagination will be required.

Note

Generally, pagination is not required for less than 100k employees. Running Full Import for a large number of employees Pagination is required if the BAPI call times out before retrieving the full set of data. You may get a stopped-extensible-exception after several hours and no import file. For additional information about how to configure paginated imports for full import, see How To Configure Paginated Imports.