SAP and Python
Posted by Graham Stratton Thu, 31 Aug 2006 21:33:47 GMT
There is growing interest in scripting languages amongst SAP developers. As a python enthusiast, I naturally wanted to use python to interface to SAP.
Scripting languages have to connect to SAP via RFC calls. saprfc is a library to do this in python created by Piers Harding. It’s available on the cheese shop.
For web interfaces there are a number of python web frameworks available. Django and Turbogears are possibly the best known of these. Like Rails, Django is very much centred on database-driven applications. Since interfacing to SAP is not what your average web framework is designed for, I wanted a framework where all the components could be easily replaced. Pylons was suggested, and I have to say I’m really enjoying using it.
Pylons is well documented, flexible (for example, you can easily change templating engines or even mix templates in a controller), and generally feels very clean. For database apps you can use SQLAlchemy or SQLObject for ORM; SQLAlchemy is highly recommended for its flexibility. Form validation is easy using FormEncode, without requiring automated form generation, leaving you in full control of page design.
