Introduction

The initial idea behind an ImageMaster/ArchiveLink integration is to provide tamper proof long-term archiving for SAP content. Today’s application architectures and capabilities allow the usage of ArchiveLink for the complete bunch of “unstructured data” (documents). ImageMaster provides the means for conserving such content in the classical way with a version history and a strong long-term retention management, which does not allow the deletion before the end of the retention period. Moreover, ImageMaster in combination with SAP supports today’s approaches based on multi-cloud environments with different storage technologies, high performance and optimized costs.

The SAP system in this interconnection can act as master system which supplies, modifies or deletes documents in an ImageMaster content repository or which requests documents from the content repository. Additionally, ImageMaster clients may be used to access the documents from the content repository or to provide further administrative functionality.

  • System overview illustrates the interconnections between SAP and ImageMaster and describes the document structures in both systems.

  • ArchiveLink is a certified interface, which allows an SAP system to archive and retrieve SAP documents in ImageMaster, which acts as content server.

  • ImageMaster SAP CUD extensions describe the ImageMaster extensions supported by SAP for creation, update and deletion.

  • Messaging for ERP provides the means for importing documents into a content server before linking them to SAP. Once documents are registered in ImageMaster as SAP documents, they become available to an SAP user.

  • Information Lifecycle Management for ERP uses the SAP ILM WebDAV storage interface that allows archiving data on external storage systems connected via the WebDAV protocol.

  • MetadataSync for ERP can be used to synchronize metadata between the two systems SAP and ImageMaster.

  • ERP ContentServer Service REST interface provides ImageMaster web services (since 9.11.2) that allow storing SAP documents and synchronization of data between ImageMaster and SAP, and offer further functionality.

  • Monitoring provides an overview of the metrics that can be monitored by ImageMaster in the context of SAP operations.

The following SAP integration scenarios have been certified with ImageMaster:

  • BC-AL 7.20 – HTTP Content Server Functionality, Barcode BAPI

  • S/4 BC-AL 7.40 – HTTP Content Server Functionality, Barcode BAPI

  • BC-ILM 3.1 – WebDAV Storage interface (for SAP NetWeaver)

  • S/4-BC-ILM 1.0 – WebDAV Storage interface