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web-servicesabapsap-basis

SAP Web Service throwing "Error during access to the ref node"

Using transaction code SRT_UTIL a web service call is reporting :

Error during access to the ref node 'ITEM'. The ref node is not defined or does not have the necessary type

ITEM is the name of a structure in the call.

Additionally it says the error type is CX_ST_REF_ACCESS and provides the following:

<ERROR_CATEGORY>XML-Conversion</ERROR_CATEGORY>
<T100_AREA>SRT_CORE</T100_AREA>
<T100_MSGNO>143</T100_MSGNO>

I'm able to communicate with other SAP web services (in the same interface and in others) without an issue. Using both VB .NET and PHP (using wsdl2phpgenerator).

Solution

  • I'm certain there are other reasons this error may appear, but in this case it turned out the BAPI structure name was 30 characters, which translated to 26 characters in the WSDL (sans the underscores). Decreasing the length of the names by 10 characters has resolved the issue.