Why It Is Recommended To Use The ActiveX Controls No Longer
Hello community,
to communicate with an SAP system many scripting or VBA programmers uses the ActiveX controls from the SAP GUI for Windows. There are wdtfuncU.ocx with the class ID SAP.Functions.Unicode, wdtaocxU.ocx, wdobapiU.ocx and wdtlogU.ocx. They are part of the SAP GUI for Windows installation. All these ActiveX controls have a dependency to the classic RFC library librfc32u.dll. The classic RFC library is since the 1st of April 2016 out of support and it is since this date not longer available in the SAP store. But it is furthermore a component of the actual SAP GUI for Windows installation, version 7.40 patchlevel 8. So it is available as part of the SAP GUI for Windows installation. A communication to an SAP system via the ActiveX controls without the classic RFC library is not possible.
In a few discussions with programmers I see that they want to use these ActiveX controls in new projects. The main reasons for this decision are
- that the libraries are available without an additional installation on any system and
- that there are a lot of examples in the internet available.
But I think there are powerful arguments against the using of ActiveX controls in new projects:
- The dependency to the classic RFC library, which is definitely deprecated.
- There will be no further development of the ActiveX controls.
- It is not possible to use newer ABAP function modules, which uses tables in export parameters.
- The ActiveX controls has no future.
I think we should not be comfortable and we should not decide to use this old fashion technology, otherwise we rob us a lot of future possibilities. I can only recommend to use alternatives. Software is used mostly for longer than is generally assumed. From the viewpoint of maintainability and ability of further development it is not good to develop a new project with this kind of technology.
Cheers
Stefan