title: Does SAP BAPI has proprietary communication format or an open one?
body: <p>I've just been dumped into the middle of a SAP project and I need to use SAPs BAPIs to pull a bunch of information out of the client SAP system.</p>
  <p>Given that SAP is a closed platform I've been having trouble finding a high-level overview of what is BAPI. I realize you could spend a lifetime working with these ERP system and still not understand the whole thing, so I just want a basic overview so I can talk intelligently with &quot;The Client's&quot; SAP folks.</p>
  <p>Specifically my questions are:</p>
  <ol>
  <li><p>Is BAPI just a wrapper for SOAP and/or XML-RPC, or is it a completely proprietary communication format?</p>
  </li>
  <li><p>How can these APIs be consumed from external PHP?</p>
  </li>
  <li><p>I've seen the acronym ABAP in relation to these BAPIs, is it somewhat related?</p>
  </li>
  </ol>