The objective of integrating Esri with SAP at the City of Phoenix, Arizona, Street Transportation Department was to make information from both systems available to department staff. A strategy was developed for building a two-way interface that enables SAP users to view the location of assets on a map and GIS users to view SAP attributes of assets on a map.

The Street Transportation Department maintains an intranet-based ArcIMS application that makes data from the department and enterprise ArcSDE databases available to users. Datasets such as the city limits, council districts, traffic signals, stop and yield sign locations, traffic count information, and pavement polygons, along with color aerial photos of the city, are available on the department's ArcIMS intranet application.

The integration of Esri with the SAP Plant Maintenance (PM) module was facilitated by modeling geographic locations, such as street intersections, as functional locations in SAP. Functional locations are first created in GIS; a unique ID is assigned to them when they are created. On completion of the process, information such as the name, description, and ID of the newly created location is then sent to SAP for the creation of the functional location in SAP. The unique GIS ID associated with functional locations serves as the primary key between the two disparate systems.

Users of the department's ArcIMS application have the capability to query their area of interest and bring up information such as the number of open maintenance work orders in the area. They can drill down into the work order information and retrieve details, such as the work order number, date it was created, and its description. Authorized users can drill down farther into the work order and retrieve other details, such as the maintenance team assigned to the work order, along with the inventory that would be used to complete the work. The GIS-SAP interface was developed using Java, ArcIMS, SAP Java connector (JCo), and custom SAP programs developed in ABAP.

For the SAP users in the department, a custom button was added to relevant SAP screens. Clicking the button while creating or reviewing work orders will launch the department's ArcIMS application and automatically zoom to the functional location associated with the work order.

See also "Enterprise Resource Implementation Through Esri GIS and SAP ERP."