BizTalk Server WCF-SAP Adapter: SAP.Middleware.Connector.RfcCommunicationException: LOCATION CPIC (TCP/IP) on local host BTSSERVERNAME with Unicode, ERROR service ‘?’ unknown

I’m currently migrating a BizTalk Server infrastructure from BizTalk Server 2013 R2 to BizTalk Server 2016, this is a simple task to do in terms of BizTalk Server Applications, or BizTalk Server solutions. However, migrating or in fact, creating a new environment always brings challenges in terms of connectivity and/or proper configurations. SAP.Middleware.Connector.RfcCommunicationException: LOCATION CPIC (TCP/IP) on local host BTSSERVERNAME with Unicode, ERROR service ‘?’ unknown error is one of these cases!

We indeed did more than simple migration, we toked this opportunity to improve our solutions and/or BizTalk Server environment to update our applications to the new available features. In terms of WCF-SAP Adapter, we are no longer using traditional RFC and we will be starting using SAP .NET Connector (NCo). Despite WCF-SAP adapter will continue to support both the RFC SDK and the SAP .NET Connector, SAP has announced deprecation of its classic RFC SDK (no longer be supported after March 31, 2016) and because of that, it shouldn’t be used anymore.

While trying to connect our BizTalk Server Receive Location to SAP in order to listen to incoming messages, we initially got this error message:

The Messaging Engine failed to add a receive location “IN_WCF_SAP_LISTENER_BTS” with URL “sap://CLIENT=400;LANG=EN;@a/SERVERNAME/00?ListenerGwServ=sapgw00&ListenerGwHost=LISTENERHOST&ListenerProgramId=BTS_LIST&RfcSdkTrace=False&AbapDebug=False” to the adapter “WCF-Custom”. Reason: “SAP.Middleware.Connector.RfcCommunicationException:

LOCATION CPIC (TCP/IP) on local host BTSSERVERNAME with Unicode

ERROR service ‘?’ unknown

TIME Fri Nov 23 13:47:22 2018

RELEASE 721

COMPONENT NI (network interface)

VERSION 40

RC -3

DETAIL NiErrSet

COUNTER 3

at SAP.Middleware.Connector.RfcServer.DoStart(Boolean logErrors)

at SAP.Middleware.Connector.RfcServer.Start()

at Microsoft.Adapters.SAP.NCo.RfcServerConnection.Open(RfcClientConnection conn)

at Microsoft.Adapters.SAP.SAPInboundContract.InitializeRfcServerConnectionNCo(String connectionArguments)

at Microsoft.Adapters.SAP.SAPInboundContract.StartListener(String[] listenerActions, TimeSpan timeout)

at Microsoft.ServiceModel.Channels.Common.Channels.AdapterChannelListener`1.OnOpen(TimeSpan timeout)

at System.ServiceModel.Channels.CommunicationObject.Open(TimeSpan timeout)

at System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.ChannelDispatcher.OnOpen(TimeSpan timeout)

at System.ServiceModel.Channels.CommunicationObject.Open(TimeSpan timeout)

at System.ServiceModel.ServiceHostBase.OnOpen(TimeSpan timeout)

at System.ServiceModel.Channels.CommunicationObject.Open(TimeSpan timeout)

at Microsoft.BizTalk.Adapter.Wcf.Runtime.WcfReceiveEndpoint.Enable()

at Microsoft.BizTalk.Adapter.Wcf.Runtime.WcfReceiveEndpoint..ctor(BizTalkEndpointContext endpointContext, IBTTransportProxy transportProxy, ControlledTermination control)

at Microsoft.BizTalk.Adapter.Wcf.Runtime.WcfReceiver`2.AddReceiveEndpoint(String url, IPropertyBag adapterConfig, IPropertyBag bizTalkConfig)”.

The receive location “IN_WCF_SAP_LISTENER_BTS_ DV” with URL “sap://CLIENT=400;LANG=EN;@a/SERVERNAME/00?ListenerGwServ=sapgw00&ListenerGwHost=LISTENERHOST&ListenerProgramId=BTS_LIST&RfcSdkTrace=False&AbapDebug=False” is shutting down. Details:”The Messaging Engine failed while notifying an adapter of its configuration. “.

Cause

The first thing you need to know is that this error is not related to the fact that we are now using the SAP .NET Connector (NCo). This error will still occur if you change back to the classic RFC.

The basic steps if of course to see if we have connectivity and proper access to SAP and because we were in DEV environment a good way to test this is to Add WCF-SAP Adapter Metadata to a BizTalk Project inside Visual Studio

• In your Visual Studio BizTalk project, in Solution Explorer, right-click your project, click Add, and then click Add Generated Items.

You will have the same look and fill as creating a Receive Port on the Administrative Console with the advantage of being able to navigate the under the SAP object structure. This way you can test connectivity and access to the proper resources.

In our case, everything worked well. We were able to connect and generate the schemas.

However, all of this is not enough. For the WCF-SAP adapter to work properly in runtime you also need to configure, somewhere in the BizTalk Server machine the TCP port where the SAP adapter will be looking for these connections, because this property is not exposed through the BizTalk Server WCF-SAP Adapter GUI port (send or receive) configuration.

In our case, the .NET Connector needs to know the port of the message server. This is also very common to happen in load balancing situations.

Solution

In order to specify this TCP port, you need to modify the ‘services’ file in each BizTalk Server machine, normally in:

• C:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc\services

To include the following entry:

MSHOST 1234/tcp # SAP ENV System Message Server Port

Where:

• MSHOST is your Gateway server, in our case sapgw00
• And 1234 is your message server port, in our case: 3300

Just for curiosity, BizTalk isn’t the only that will use these values and this ‘services’ file. SAPGUI will also use these same values when connecting to SAP systems.

After we did this configuration, we were able to connect and start receiving messages from our SAP system.