External Quotation Interface

Use
The external quotation interface automatically makes real-time market data available for Formula and Average Pricing (F&A Pricing). The interface accesses and accepts published prices, rates, and commodities from providers of financial information, such as Reuters, Platts, or Telerate. Every data provider uses different notations or ticker symbols for retrieving market data. The R/3 System also uses different notations. The translation table makes it possible for notation requests from the R/3 System to be converted into requests the data providers can interpret, and vice versa. The external quotation interface sends requests for market data to an external interface program and the data provider returns price information. The market data buffer in the R/3 System contains the last market data relating to a single request. A new request overwrites the previous one.

Integration
The IS-Oil System uses the R/3 Treasury Realtime Datafeed (TR-DF) function to request and receive market data from providers of market data.

Prerequisites
To use the external quotation interface, an appropriate interface program must be in operation. The interface program is a third-party software program supplied by a data provider. The third-party interface program must use a data exchange format that is compatible with TR-DF function. The following customizing is necessary before you can request market data using the external quotation interface:

Set up the data provider connection

You must enter the name of the data provider to be used. In Customizing choose Treasury Treasury Management Basic Functions Market Data Management Datafeed Technical Settings Define datafeed name. You must define all the logical links between the external partner program of the datafeed provider and your R/3 System. These logical links are called RFC destinations and are used to establish a connection and download data from the data provider's system. In Customizing choose Treasury Treasury Management Basic Functions Market Data Management Datafeed Technical Settings Define RFC destination. For each mode of communication (synchronous and transactional), you define the name of the external function, the RFC destination and, if applicable, the backup RFC destination (optional). You must set up a (Remote Function Call) RFC connection to the data provider. In Customizing choose Treasury Treasury Management Basic Functions Market Data Management Datafeed Technical Settings RFC Settings for External Partner Program Assign Datafeed RFC Destination.
Defining the quotation data

You must define the various types of quotations used in F&A Pricing. The quotation type together with the quotation source is used to define a specific quotation. In Customizing for IS-Oil Downstream choose MAP Formula & Average Pricing Define quotation types. You define the sources from which quotation data is collected by entering the name of the quotation source and the user exit routine used to retrieve price quotation data. In Customizing choose MAP Formula & Average Pricing Define quotation source. You define the various quotations for which prices are collected and the currency and unit of measure in which the quotation prices are quoted. The quotation data is defined with a combination of quotation source and quotation type. In Customizing choose MAP Formula & Average Pricing Define quotation data.

Set up the notation mapping table

The translation table translates the notation or terminology from the data provider into terminology the R/3 System can interpret. Data providers such as Telerate provide quotations from other data providers, such as Reutters. This is represented in the system using data sources. To define data sources, in Customizing choose Treasury Treasury Management Basic Functions Market Data Management Datafeed Translation Table Define data sources for datafeed. You define how to import commodities using the external partner program of your datafeed provider. You can define whether the prices are only supplied upon explicit request from the R/3 System, or whether they should be supplied on a real-time basis via the datafeed provider's external partner program. In Customizing choose Treasury Treasury Management Basic Functions Market Data Management Translation Table Define Commodities.

Activities
To download the most recent market quotations into the IS-Oil quotation table, the market data must be requested: Choose Accounting Treasury Treasury Management Basic Functions Market Data Management Datafeed Market Data Supply Request Current Market Data. 2. Enter data as required. 1. 3. Choose Program Execute.