title: The best practice of exposing SAP database to external parties?
body: <p>I will soon work for a company project which will develop a custom .net application that will integrate with the SAP ERP system.</p>
  
  <p>I virtually know nothing about SAP, so I did some research on the web and found out that it supports multiple types of database.</p>
  
  <p>What I want to know is:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>can I directly read SAP tables thru ado.net?</p>
    
    <p>Or is the database behind a web service?</p>
    
    <p>Or is it undetermined because it depends on how the SAP system is implemented?</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>(the third question comes to my mind after knowing that SAP is not confined to any particular type of database)</p>