What are the best practices for accessing files on an SAP S/4HANA system from SAP Cloud Integration?

[MustafaBensan]

Dear Community,

Variations of this question have been asked before in the Community.  However, I would like to be more specific and request your feedback based on latest experiences.

Context
There are scenarios where due to legacy system requirements, files must be output from an SAP S/4HANA system and integrated with the legacy system via SAP Integration Suite (SAP Cloud Integration).  In my case, the system is SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Private Edition.

The classic approach is for files to be output to an AL11 directory, in which case SAP Note 3343395 - FAQ: How to connect Cloud Integration to T-code AL11 recommends:

"Cloud Integration cannot directly connect to T-code AL11.
Your System Administrator / Integration Developer should set up FTP or SFTP service, for Cloud Integration to consume the file repository."

Solution Options
The following proposals have been suggested to address the requirement:

1.  Set up / co-deploy an SFTP server directly on the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition Server.

2.  Store the file object in the SAP TemSe Data Storage and expose an OData API that reads Temse data storage so that it can be consumed by SAP Cloud Integration to access the file object, thereby avoiding the need for setting up an SFTP server.

3.  Wait for the SAP Integration Edge Cell File Adapter planned for Q1 2025.

I would very much appreciate your experiences and recommendations on this topic.

Thanks,

Mustafa.

[Ryan-Crosby]

We have option #1 for FTP which really doesn't require much effort to setup.

[Ryan-Crosby]

We are outputting payment files using DMEE to transmit to a bank. That is the only file integration that we have currently, but in the future there could be other scenarios and we are running S4 on-prem.

[MAVR]

Hi Mustafa,
The best approach is to expose the files on your S/4HANA (OP or Cloud Private Edition) via the SFTP server.
This solution allows S/4HANA to write the file using AL11 mapped directories and allows BTP Cloud Integration to connect using SAP Cloud Connector.

The second option will need custom code, if even possible to retrieve the file with the correct format and encoding (imagine a payment or other type of file where every character matters). Why complicate things with SAP printing capabilities?
In such a case where you are contemplating writing custom code, you can request a custom remote function module that, when called, retrieves the files from the specific directory and responds with the file in either STRING or BASE64, the FM can be called directly or through the Web Services Runtime (SRT).

The third option, which is SAP Edge Integration Cell using FILE ADAPTER, is an unknown as we don't know all the capabilities it will provide, but remember, EIC is running on a K8s cluster, so most likely, you will need to "Export NFS Shares", "Install NFS Client on K8s Nodes", "Create PV and PVC and mount to the Pods", on top of that consider Network Policies, control access between NFS server and the K8s cluster, everything running in managed environments, I am sure it will work, but it won't be "next-next-finish" wizard. (Honest opinion: I am looking forward to the EIC solution).

Best regards 🖖🏻

[JR_Arcilla]

May I ask for any links to documentation on how to setup the SFTP server for S/4HANA Cloud Private edition?

[MustafaBensan]

@Ryan-Crosby,

Thanks for the fast response.  A couple of questions for clarification:
1)  Is your system SAP S/4HANA on-premise or SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition?
2)  For which scenarios are you outputting files from SAP S/4HANA?