In shortA BAPI (Business Application Programming Interface) is a standardised interface, callable through RFC, for working with SAP business objects; RFC (Remote Function Call) is the SAP protocol that makes the call possible.
BAPIs expose operations such as “create”, “change” and “read” for an SAP business object with documented parameters. The call is made over RFC and is usually synchronous: the result and messages come back in a return table.
Two practical points stand out. First, many BAPI calls that change data need a separate commit step afterwards. Second, if a call is repeated, duplicate protection must exist in SAP or in the flow so the same transaction is not created twice.
In OPC Router projects
With the OPC Router SAP plug-in, RFC and BAPI calls can be added to a workflow. Field mapping, commit behaviour and error handling are defined together in the project.