New Pipeline Concept features: supporting custom header properties and dynamic configuration

[alex_bundschuh]

We have recently shipped a new version 1.0.7 of the Pipeline Concept were we introduced two new features:

• Support for custom header properties
• Support for dynamic configuration parameters

The package can be accessed from the SAP Business Accelerator Hub. If you have already copied the package to your workspace in your SAP Integration Suite tenant, you can simply run the update of the package to be able to use the latest features.

Let me briefly show you how the new features can be leveraged.

Custom header properties

It is now possible to add custom header properties to the message processing log of the generic integration flows to be able to search for logs based on any payload data. For this, you need to pass a list of name and value pairs to the generic integration flows using the header customHeaderProperties.

You can configure the header in either the scenario-specific inbound processing flow or the scenario-specific inbound conversion flow depending on your integration scenario.

In our case, we like to create three custom header properties. So, in a content modifier, we first define the required exchange properties based on the respective xpath expressions.

Then, we define the header customHeaderProperties where we separate name and value using colon, and separating the value pairs using pipe. In our case, we set it as follows:

productId:${property.productId}|category:${property.category}|purchaseOrder:${property.purchaseOrder}.

In the generic integration flows, a groovy script splits up the list of name and value pairs and adds the custom header properties accordingly.

Once we have successfully exchanged messages for this very scenario, let's enter the monitoring. Let me take the chance to show you another new enhancements which we have recently shipped and which was highly demanded by many of you: the message status overview. In the monitoring page, I click on the Message Status Overview tile.

Here, I get an overview of all messages processed within the given time frame grouped by different artifact types or other parameters like sender, receiver, message type. In our case, I have grouped by sender.

From here, I can then navigate to the message monitor. As you can see, you get the custom headers displayed in the Properties tab of the message processing logs of the generic integration flows. Furthermore, in the filter section you can search for specific custom header values.

Dynamic configuration parameters

You can pass any header starting with dc as dynamic configuration parameters to the generic integration flows. Next to the payload-based routing conditions, this allows you to support header-based routing conditions.

In the scenario-specific inbound processing flow, I can define such headers.

All generic integration flows allow those headers starting with dc.

In the XSLTs to determine the receivers or interfaces I can then use those headers to define my routing conditions.

If you like to try out the pipeline concept in general and the new features in particular, check out this github repository where I describe how to setup sample scenarios using the pipeline concept. Here, the dynamic configuration is used for scenario 1, the custom header properties have been maintained for scenarios 1, 3, 4, and 5.