SAP - Creating and Updating Vendor Master Records through SAP API

As an ERP, you would think that programatically creating a basic Vendor record in SAP would be one of the basic, easily accessible functions right?

WRONG! (Thunderclap ensues...)

When creating technical specifications for a vendor create function being called from SAP BPM, I tried to find how to programmatically create a Vendor. Unfortunately, this area is not well documented (like many areas of SAP) so I had to do the usual exhaustive/brute force search for the correct Function Module or Class Calls to make. This is what I found:

1. There is a BAPI in SAP called "BAPI_VENDOR_CREATE" that I found through standard transaction /nbapi - however if you look at the definition it doesn't actually have any parameters. This effectively makes it useless. Obviously it is for internal use!
   
   
2. The SAP Enterprise Service (BusinessPartnerDataManagementSupplierIn) is not comprehensive at all - it has a create, but not an update. Seems like quite an oversight to me... I am reluctant to use the enterprise service (which is the "Best Practice" Method of making updates to SAP) for the "Create Vendor" call, but another API set for the Update of that same Vendor. My search continues...
   
3. Perhaps it is available as a Class, not a BAPI or Enterprise Service.... so I went to transaction /nse80 (Repository Browser) and did several exhaustive searches on SAP classes. I eventually found a few possible candidates - and nailed it down to the "Vendor Maintenance API" - VMD_EI_API, which has an "INITIALIZE" Method and a "MAINTENANCE" method which allows for the create and the update of vendors. Voila!
   
   Using the Repository Browser to nail down that Vendor Create API:

Found the needle in the proverbial haystack at the bottom of the search list (VMD_EI_API - the SAP Vendor Maintenance API):

Here is the model we used to call this from web services (done via SAP PI to simplify mapping):

UPDATE (14 Oct 2009) : Obviously other people have been having the same issue trying to find the API - as per my post on the SAP Developer Network (SDN) - https://forumsa.sdn.sap.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8283585#8283585