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There is a wealth of information on the Internet regarding connectivity from SAP to external/legacy applications. SearchSAP.com is a good place to start but you may also want to check out SAP's developer network.
From an architecture point of view, one of the current best practice approaches for connecting an SAP to a non-SAP system is called a Services Oriented Architecture. Although SOA can be defined through a number of different technical implementations, at a high level SOA means exposing reusable services through a generic middleware layer. This middleware can be written in any language that is compatible with your application subsystems.
Of course, my background is Java integration for SAP so I would recommend looking at SAP's Java connector, JCo. JCo allows you to tap into any exposed RFC/BAPI interface available within SAP. The major caveat when exposing SAP tables this way is to do so through a published and supported SAP interface. If you attempt direct table updates against a standard SAP table you are almost guaranteed failure. JCo is available through SAP service marketplace as a free download, and sites like SearchSAP.com have a number of helpful articles to get you going.
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