One of the most web application server in open source community is Apache Tomcat. The latest stable version is 5.5.20. It is possible to develop a web application that tightly interfaces to SAP R/3 or its components via SAP JCo aka SAP Java Connector. Its latest version is 2.1.7. It is a little bit tricky to run SAP JCo inside Apache Tomcat on Linux.

In this howto, I assume that:

• Linux distribution Ubuntu Edgy Eft 6.10
• Apache Tomcat 5.5.20 installed at /opt/tomcat
• SAP JCo 2.1.7 installed at /opt/sapjco

Make sure that the native shared libraries in /opt/sapjco are loadable by running ldd to verify dependencies.

$ ldd /opt/sapjco/librfccm.so 
        linux-gate.so.1 =>  (0xffffe000)
        libdl.so.2 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libdl.so.2 (0xb7a04000)
        librt.so.1 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/librt.so.1 (0xb79fb000)
        libpthread.so.0 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libpthread.so.0 (0xb79e7000)
        libc.so.6 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6 (0xb78b3000)
        libstdc++-libc6.2-2.so.3 => /usr/lib/libstdc++-libc6.2-2.so.3 (0xb786b000)
        libm.so.6 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libm.so.6 (0xb7845000)
        /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x80000000)

If you get like above, you are lucky. In some cases, you might get something like below.

        libstdc++-libc6.2-2.so.3 => not found

It is clearly you don't have libstdc++-libc6.2-2.so.3. You may install libstdc++2.10-glibc2.2 to resolve this dependency.

sudo apt-get install libstdc++2.10-glibc2.2

Next is to try the same at libsapjcorfc.so.

$ ldd /opt/sapjco/libsapjcorfc.so 
        linux-gate.so.1 =>  (0xffffe000)
        libdl.so.2 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libdl.so.2 (0xb7b97000)
        librt.so.1 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/librt.so.1 (0xb7b8e000)
        librfccm.so => not found
        libc.so.6 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6 (0xb7a59000)
        libstdc++-libc6.2-2.so.3 => /usr/lib/libstdc++-libc6.2-2.so.3 (0xb7a11000)
        libm.so.6 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libm.so.6 (0xb79eb000)
        /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x80000000)
        libpthread.so.0 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libpthread.so.0 (0xb79d8000)

You may get not found for librfccm.so. Try to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH to see it help or not.

$ LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/sapjco ldd /opt/sapjco/libsapjcorfc.so 
        linux-gate.so.1 =>  (0xffffe000)
        libdl.so.2 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libdl.so.2 (0xb7c39000)
        librt.so.1 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/librt.so.1 (0xb7c30000)
        librfccm.so => /opt/sapjco/librfccm.so (0xb76ea000)
        libc.so.6 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6 (0xb75b6000)
        libstdc++-libc6.2-2.so.3 => /usr/lib/libstdc++-libc6.2-2.so.3 (0xb756e000)
        libm.so.6 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libm.so.6 (0xb7548000)
        /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x80000000)
        libpthread.so.0 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libpthread.so.0 (0xb7535000)

Hooray! It works. This is a good signal. So you just to have a wrapper script to start and stop Tomcat correctly.

#!/bin/sh

JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun-1.5.0.08/jre
TOMCAT_HOME=/opt/tomcat
SAPJCO_HOME=/opt/sapjco
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$SAPJCO_HOME

export JAVA_HOME TOMCAT_HOME LD_LIBRARY_PATH

case "$1" in
  start)
    $TOMCAT_HOME/bin/startup.sh
    ;;
  stop)
    $TOMCAT_HOME/bin/shutdown.sh
    ;;
esac

The idea is very easy. You need to add /opt/sapjco to LD_LIBRARY_PATH. If you copied them to /usr/lib, you don't need this wrapper. Using above script is as follows (assuming that the script named tomcat.

To start:

tomcat start

To shutdown:

tomcat stop

Tags: tomcat, sap jco, linux