XML Format for IDocs
To create an asynchronous communication, IDocs are exchanged between two SAP systems. There are two ways to define concrete IDocs to communicate asynchronously:
As of Release 4.0, generate an IDoc from an existing BAPI.
Create IDocs manually.
Therefore, two different ways of representing IDocs in XML can be distinguished:
If the IDoc was generated from an existing BAPI, the asynchronous communication is performed by using the BAPI interface. Consequently, the exchanged business documents are created from the corresponding BAPI. The IDoc itself is not visible at XML level.
IDocs that were defined manually and not generated from BAPIs require a separate XML representation. This representation is described in detail below.