HANA Cloud Integration (HCI) - Application Edition Learning Series - Part 2

[AbinashNanda]

Introduction

In this blog we will look at the HCI tooling and the pre-packaged contents available from SAP.

Generally speaking HCI tooling comes in 2 flavours. Eclipse based and Web based. We will look at the Web based tooling in a subsequent blog. For now we will keep our focus limited to Eclipse based tooling

Installation

.

1. For Eclipse based tooling we need to download and install Eclipse Juno or Kepler Classic IDE.
2. Then we simply need to install the HCI specific plugins from the SAP development tools packages for Eclipse link.

Below is a screen shot of the required plugins for HCI. Note I am using Eclipse Classic 4.2 version sr2 package.

Note: For detailed installation instruction please follow the link at SAP Development Tools for Eclipse

Once Installation for the plugins are completed, Eclipse will have two new perspective Integration Designer and Integration Operations, which we will use for HCI

Pre-packaged Content

HCI pre-packaged content are delivered via a cloud based catalogue (also called as HCI Spaces). A pubic catalogue is available at https://cloudintegration.hana.ondemand.com/#shell/catalog.

Once a customer gets an HCI account, an account specific catalogue link will be provided where one can browse and download the pre-packaged content for a specific integration scenario.

From the catalogue we can download the iFlow as shown below. Through out this series we will use the Attachment replication to SAP Cloud for Customer iFlow scenario as much as possible with exception of few places.

The content will be downloaded as a zip archive which can be imported into the Eclipse as shown in the next section

Import, Configure and Deploy the iFlow Project

Before we import the iFlow some useful tips for working with Eclipse tooling

1. Build Automatically should be off. Navigation path Project->Build Automatically
2. In the customization view Java output folders should not be checked in the Filters as shown below

    

Now we can import the iFlow using the Import Wizard using navigation path File->Import.

We can use the Select archive file option to import the zip file downloaded from web catalogue as shown below

Then the iFlow project should be available in Project explorer view in the Integration Designer perspective.

Now as a next step we need to adapt the parameters in the Externalized Parameter view of the Integration Designer perspective.

Finally check the iFlow and deploy it to the tenant using the context menu either on the Project or on the Integration Flow

Now as a last step we should check the deployment status and make sure the iFlow is running. For this open the Integration Operations perspective.

We can check the deploy state in the Deployed Artifacts view and

Runtime status in the Component status view as shown below

In the last blog of this series we will discuss about what actions to be taken if the runtime status is not started.

In the next blog we will look at the iFlow itself and talk about various properties. Watch out for the next blog in the series and happy learning.