Natively Connect to SAP Netweaver Gateway Data in PHP



Create PHP applications on Linux/UNIX machines with connectivity to SAP Netweaver Gateway data. Leverage the native support for ODBC in PHP.

Drop the CData ODBC Driver for SAP Netweaver Gateway into your LAMP or WAMP stack to build SAP Netweaver Gateway-connected Web applications. This article shows how to use PHP's ODBC built-in functions to connect to SAP Netweaver Gateway data, execute queries, and output the results.

Using the CData ODBC Drivers on a UNIX/Linux Machine

The CData ODBC Drivers are supported in various Red Hat-based and Debian-based systems, including Ubuntu, Debian, RHEL, CentOS, and Fedora. There are also several libraries and packages that are required, many of which may be installed by default, depending on your system. For more information on the supported versions of Linux operating systems and the required libraries, please refer to the "Getting Started" section in the help documentation (installed and found online).

Installing the Driver Manager

Before installing the driver, check that your system has a driver manager. For this article, you will use unixODBC, a free and open source ODBC Driver manager that is widely supported.

For Debian-based systems like Ubuntu, you can install unixODBC with the APT package manager:

$ sudo apt-get install unixodbc unixodbc-dev

For systems based on Red Hat Linux, you can install unixODBC with yum or dnf:

$ sudo yum install unixODBC unixODBC-devel

The unixODBC driver manager reads information about drivers from an odbcinst.ini file and about data sources from an odbc.ini file. You can determine the location of the configuration files on your system by entering the following command into a terminal:

$ odbcinst -j

The output of the command will display the locations of the configuration files for ODBC data sources and registered ODBC drivers. User data sources can only be accessed by the user account whose home folder the odbc.ini is located in. System data sources can be accessed by all users. Below is an example of the output of this command:

DRIVERS............: /etc/odbcinst.ini SYSTEM DATA SOURCES: /etc/odbc.ini FILE DATA SOURCES..: /etc/ODBCDataSources USER DATA SOURCES..: /home/myuser/.odbc.ini SQLULEN Size.......: 8 SQLLEN Size........: 8 SQLSETPOSIROW Size.: 8

Installing the Driver

You can download the driver in standard package formats: the Debian .deb package format or the .rpm file format. Once you have downloaded the file, you can install the driver from the terminal.

The driver installer registers the driver with unixODBC and creates a system DSN, which can be used later in any tools or applications that support ODBC connectivity.

For Debian-based systems like Ubuntu, run the following command with sudo or as root: $ dpkg -i /path/to/package.deb

For Red Hat systems or other systems that support .rpms, run the following command with sudo or as root: $ rpm -i /path/to/package.rpm

Once the driver is installed, you can list the registered drivers and defined data sources using the unixODBC driver manager:

List the Registered Driver(s)

$ odbcinst -q -d CData ODBC Driver for SAP Netweaver Gateway ...

List the Defined Data Source(s)

$ odbcinst -q -s CData SAPGateway Source ...

To use the CData ODBC Driver for SAP Netweaver Gateway with unixODBC, ensure that the driver is configured to use UTF-16. To do so, edit the INI file for the driver (cdata.odbc.sapgateway.ini), which can be found in the lib folder in the installation location (typically /opt/cdata/cdata-odbc-driver-for-sapgateway), as follows:

cdata.odbc.sapgateway.ini

... [Driver] DriverManagerEncoding = UTF-16

Modifying the DSN

The driver installation predefines a system DSN. You can modify the DSN by editing the system data sources file (/etc/odbc.ini) and defining the required connection properties. Additionally, you can create user-specific DSNs that will not require root access to modify in $HOME/.odbc.ini.

SAP Gateway allows both basic and OAuth 2.0 authentication. You can use basic authentication to connect to your own account, or you can use OAuth to enable other users to retrieve data from your service with their accounts. In addition to authenticating, set the following connection properties to access SAP Gateway tables.

  • Url: Set this to the URL of your environment, or to the full URL of the service. For example, the full URL might appear as: https://sapes5.sapdevcenter.com/sap/opu/odata/IWBEP/GWSAMPLE_BASIC/. In this example, the environment URL would just be: https://sapes5.sapdevcenter.com.
  • Namespace: Set the appropriate Service Namespace. In the example above, IWBEP is the namespace. It is optional if the full URL to the service is specified.
  • Service: Set this to the service you want to retrieve data from. In the example above, the service is GWSAMPLE_BASIC. It is not required if the full URL is specified.

Authenticate via Basic Authentication

In basic authentication, you use your login credentials to connect. Set the following properties:

  • User: This is the username you use to log in to SAP Gateway.
  • Password: This is the password you use to log in to SAP Gateway.

Authenticate via OAuth Authentication

You can connect to SAP Gateway using the embedded OAuth connectivity (without setting any additional authentication connection properties). When you connect, the OAuth endpoint opens in your browser. Log in and grant permissions to complete the OAuth process. See the OAuth section in the online Help documentation for more information on other OAuth authentication flows.

/etc/odbc.ini or $HOME/.odbc.ini

[CData SAPGateway Source] Driver = CData ODBC Driver for SAP Netweaver Gateway Description = My Description User = user Password = password URL = https://sapes5.sapdevcenter.com/sap/opu/odata/IWBEP/GWSAMPLE_BASIC/

For specific information on using these configuration files, please refer to the help documentation (installed and found online).

Establish a Connection

Open the connection to SAP Netweaver Gateway by calling the odbc_connect or odbc_pconnect methods. To close connections, use odbc_close or odbc_close_all.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC SAPGateway Source","user","password");

Connections opened with odbc_connect are closed when the script ends. Connections opened with the odbc_pconnect method are still open after the script ends. This enables other scripts to share that connection when they connect with the same credentials. By sharing connections among your scripts, you can save system resources and queries execute faster.

$conn = odbc_pconnect("CData ODBC SAPGateway Source","user","password"); ... odbc_close($conn); //persistent connection must be closed explicitly

Create Prepared Statements

Create prepared statements and parameterized queries with the odbc_prepare function.

$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM SalesOrderLineItems WHERE Quantity = ?");

Execute Queries

Execute prepared statements with odbc_execute.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC SAPGateway Source","user","password"); $query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM SalesOrderLineItems WHERE Quantity = ?"); $success = odbc_execute($query, array('15'));

Execute nonparameterized queries with odbc_exec.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC SAPGateway Source","user","password"); $query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT ProductID, Quantity FROM SalesOrderLineItems WHERE Quantity < 15");

Process Results

Access a row in the result set as an array with the odbc_fetch_array function.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC SAP Netweaver Gateway data Source","user","password"); $query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT ProductID, Quantity FROM SalesOrderLineItems WHERE Quantity < 15"); while($row = odbc_fetch_array($query)){ echo $row["ProductID"] . "\n"; }

Display the result set in an HTML table with the odbc_result_all function.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC SAP Netweaver Gateway data Source","user","password"); $query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM SalesOrderLineItems WHERE Quantity = ?"); $success = odbc_execute($query, array('15')); if($success) odbc_result_all($query);

More Example Queries

You will find complete information on the SQL queries supported by the driver in the help documentation. The code examples above are SAP Netweaver Gateway-specific adaptations of the PHP community documentation for all ODBC functions.

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SAP Netweaver Gateway Icon SAP Netweaver Gateway ODBC Driver

The SAP Netweaver Gateway ODBC Driver is a powerful tool that allows you to connect with live data from SAP Netweaver Gateway, directly from any applications that support ODBC connectivity.

Access SAP Netweaver Gateway data like you would a database - read, write, and update SAP Netweaver Gateway Entities, etc. through a standard ODBC Driver interface.