Mapping ALE functionality to Enterprise Services

[Former Member]

Hi SAP Gurus,

I am in an assignment to leverage Enterprise Services in the project and as part of it i need to understand how we can use Enterprise Services for the following requirements which are well supported by ALE/Idoc functionality.

1) Master Data Distribution - We have ALE Change Pointers mechanism to track the changes done to the master data (Customer/Material/Vendor) and we can process the changes and create the idocs for the same by EOD. Changes are tracked based on the field level and interface level(Message Type). How can we leverage this change pointer mechanism in Enterprise Services.

2) Best practice to trigger the Outbound enterprise services from ECC system.

3) There are various tools to monitor IDOCs in ECC, what all are the tolls/transactions for monitoring the Enterprise Service.

4) What is your view on IDOC V/s Enterprise Service

Regards,

Pras

[ThomasZloch]

Please let us know first what you have researched yourself so far and what your view is, so people don't spend time answering with information that you are already aware of.

There is also an "Enterprise Services Repository" forum on SCN that you can have a look at.

Thomas

[Former Member]

Thomas,

I have done my homework of searching all the possible sites and already available forums and still did not find any information regarding the questions i have raised. Especially i dont see its usage against ALE IDOC technology. Posting here on SDN forum is always last option for me.

Also, I have already checked the other SOA forum and gone through almost every possible question, for that matter i have posted my question there also and still have not got a single response and thus i posted here as well as this forum is also relevant.

Regards,

Pras

Edited by: prasanna J on Nov 16, 2011 12:32 AM

[Sougata]

Hi Prasanna,

These are two quite different technologies and framework here that your questions are about. One is SMD (Shared Master Data) tool which involves change pointers & IDocs and the other is an Enterprise Service for example an ABAP Proxy or a Web Service.

1. Why would a customer want to do that especially for standard master data applications like Customer Master, Vendor Master, Material Master etc? I mean I don't understand the benefit of it when all these standard applications already support SMD. If a customer really wants these same functionalities via an Enterprise Service then they basically have to develop more custom applications to support this - for e.g. a Z program which will essentially replace BD21 to process the change pointers (CP) per application i.e. call the associated ABAP Proxy which will then create/do not create IDocs, process the CP by applying business logic, generate XML for PI to distribute further, email/do not email business owner, change the status of the CP depending on the outcome of the processing, exception handling etc. etc. But this whole thing, in my view, is cumbersome and sort of unnecessary as most of these things could be achieved via the SMD tool (except creating the IDoc itself of course!)

The other way, to totally get rid of the CPs and process every change via ES - one would have to enhance all applications in question to call the ES (ABAP Proxy) at the time of master data change! There is no equivalent of BD64 in ES so I don't understand the purpose to be honest.

2. In my view, to trigger it as an Outbound Proxy or Client Proxy via Method call.

3. SXMB_MONI

4. Like I said in the beginning, its like comparing two different technologies - I guess in the end it comes down to the business requirement at hand. Both can be very efficient (or very inefficient if deployed incorrectly).

Cheers,

Sougata.

[Former Member]

Hi Sougata,

Thanks for your response, i understand from your email and other various resources that ES is not really integrated to application logic like ALE IDOC/EDI technology does. And thus it requires little bit of efforts to adopt them to applications logic and to make it robust like ALE IDocs.

Firstly, my requirement is to send the Master data to external systems and thus my requirement to look for a technology to achieve this, which either can be file download/ IDoc / ES and so on. And yes, you are right Idocs uses SMD for distributing Master data.

My second question was with regards to triggering the proxy/ES from the Application logic. After doing further R&D, I understand we can use either BADI, Customer exits, Enhancement points, BTE, Events from Business objects or output control. But my question was are these the only ways? and if yes which is the best practice.

Regarding fourth question, If we look at SAP's Road Map it deals more about ES and ESOA.. Whats the future of ALE IDOCS?? Are we sure it does not get obsolete?? Recent days i hardly hear anything exciting about ALE IDOCS from SAP.. This does not look promising for me as SAP is not investing further money into this.

Regards,

Prasanna