The PDC Gateway was developed closely with the software engineers from Kronos® and SAP® under the SAP® recommended and certified processes for external system integration.  Kronos® The Kronos® connection is direct, using the same internal system structure processes used by Kronos systems, and was designed to flawlessly gather and submit the needed data for integration between the two systems. This allows current Kronos® systems to harness the integration without alterations to the existing internal data structure and the PDC Gateway database subset co-exists on the same Kronos® database further allowing speed and accuracy. SAP® The PDC Gateway supports both TRFC and SRFC SAP® protocols bi-directionally. The TRFC protocols in an asynchronous interface utilizing SAP® IDOCS via ALE while the SRFC protocol is a direct BAPI interface. In some cases such as PP-PDC time tickets, the TRFC protocol can also be used as a direct asynchronous interface without the disadvantages of delayed IDOC processing. Depending on business and performance requirements, either protocol can be used for communication to SAP®. All of the interface points into SAP® via IDOC or BAPI are standard SAP® interfaces. There are no internal development requirements in the SAP® system, nor are there any additional software or hardware requirements for any of the interface protocols; everything is internal to the PDC Gateway product and the existing Kronos® and SAP® systems.

System The PDC Gateway runs quietly on the Kronos® server as multiple services. At anytime status can be checked graphically by opening the PDC Gateway Monitor. The PDC Gateway can support any number of Kronos® instances. Process detail can be easily monitored by viewing the status page of the Monitor tool. In addition, trace files for all SAP activities are maintained as well as individual TID (Transactional Identification) records for SAP uploads and downloads on a per call basis. All of the transactional data is stored on the PDC Gateway database instance. This allows for verification, research, reporting, troubleshooting and other tasks that require a detailed history of the integration transactions. The PDC Gateway is a multithreading system.  It assigns tasks to seperate "Gateway Controllers" that perform the task and report back the results.  Each process can in turn trigger child processes or other processes to perform some other required task such as error handling. Summary The PDC Gateway for Kronos® and SAP® is the bi-directional bridge between Kronos® systems and SAP® PP, HR, PM modules and Timeclocks. The PDC Gateway provides data transfer, mapping, translation, error handling and is fully configurable and programmable with the full-featured internal toolset. Whether a system is comprised of a single server instance of Kronos® and a single plant of SAP® or an international chain of Kronos® systems and multiple SAP® servers, plants, and clients, the PDC Gateway is fully capable and scalable to solve the integration needs of virtually any business requirement.