SAP for agents who have never used it — the products you will meet (S/4HANA editions, ECC, SAP BTP, Business Accelerator Hub), how BTP accounts are structured, the integration technologies (OData, SOAP, RFC/BAPI, IDoc, events), and the words SAP people use
Orientation for an AI coding agent new to SAP. Covers the systems that hold the business data (S/4HANA in its cloud and on-premise forms, and the older ECC); SAP BTP, where integrations and extensions run (global accounts, subaccounts, regions, the Cloud Foundry, Kyma and ABAP environments); the Business Accelerator Hub catalogue of published APIs; the interface technologies and which to prefer; and a short glossary. Read before choosing a connection path.
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SAP for agents who have never used it
Why SAP feels hard to connect to:
- The business system usually sits inside a company network ("not exposed to the internet", in SAP's own words).
- Access is configured per integration by SAP administrators, not by self-service API keys.
- The interface depends on which edition the customer runs.
- SAP restricts which interfaces third parties and AI agents may use (
reference/connectivity/choose-a-connection-path.md).
The systems you will meet
| System | What it is | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|
| S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition | SAP's SaaS ERP | Reachable over the internet, but only through published APIs that an admin enables per integration (a communication arrangement) |
| S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition and S/4HANA on-premise | The same ERP, run for one customer | Usually inside a private network. Reach it through SAP BTP and the Cloud Connector, or a network path the customer's IT provides |
| SAP ECC | The previous-generation ERP, still widely run | Older interfaces (RFC/BAPI, IDoc, SOAP, some OData). Treat it like on-premise |
| SAP BTP (Business Technology Platform) | SAP's cloud platform for integrations, extensions, AI and data | Where SAP wants integrations to run. It holds the destinations and the connectivity service that reach on-premise systems |
| SAP Business Accelerator Hub (api.sap.com) | The catalogue of SAP's published APIs, with specifications and a sandbox | Start every integration by finding the published API here |
The hub's reading: in a customer project, ask which edition and release they run before anything else. It decides every later choice.
SAP BTP in five lines
- A global account is your contract with SAP. It holds entitlements and quotas, and it is region-independent.
- Subaccounts are where you deploy applications, use services and subscribe. Each subaccount is in exactly one region, hosted by SAP, AWS, Azure, Google Cloud or Alibaba Cloud.
- Directories (optional) group subaccounts, up to 7 levels deep including the global account.
- Environments live in a subaccount:
- Cloud Foundry (an org per subaccount, apps in spaces);
- Kyma (managed Kubernetes);
- ABAP;
- the older Neo, which SAP's own docs flag with a caution.
- You manage all of it in the SAP BTP cockpit, or with the
btpandcfCLIs (reference/overview/tools.md).
Interface technologies, best first
| Technology | What it is | Use it when |
|---|---|---|
| OData (V2 and V4) | REST over HTTP with query options ($filter, $select, $top, $expand), served by SAP Gateway | Default. Most published S/4HANA APIs are OData |
| SOAP web services | XML services, often for document-style processes | The published API for your process is SOAP |
| Events | Business events (for example, a business partner changed) | You need change notifications instead of polling |
| RFC / BAPI | SAP's native remote function calls into ABAP function modules | Older systems with no published OData API. Needs SAP's RFC libraries, and is restricted for third parties |
| IDoc | Asynchronous document exchange (orders, invoices) | Classic EDI-style integration, usually through middleware |
Words SAP people use
- Client (
sap-client): a tenant inside one SAP system, identified by a three-digit number. The same URL can serve several clients, so requests carrysap-client. The SAP Cloud SDK sends it as a header when the destination has asap-clientproperty. - ABAP: SAP's programming language.
- CDS views: data models defined in ABAP, which many OData APIs are built on.
- SAP Gateway: the OData layer of an ABAP system; services live under
/sap/opu/odata/.... - Business partner: the single master record for customers and suppliers in S/4HANA.
- Company code: a legal entity in the books.
- Clean core: SAP's rule that extensions and integrations use only released, published interfaces, so upgrades don't break them.
The hub's reading: the last four definitions are standard SAP vocabulary; family 3 will cite each object's API.