Integration alternatives

[Former Member]

I'm doing some fact finding in order to get insight into how we can integrate our software with SAP. Essentially, we have a supply chain application that needs to read typical data like items, locations, SKUs, purchase orders, sales, demand forecasts, etc, from the customer system (i.e. SAP), process the data, and bring the output back into SAP. There seems to be quite a few ways to do this. Our software is a typical batch process -- e.g. we need large volumes of data every weekend, crunch numbers for a few hours, and then produce a report. I would be grateful for any comments and pointers on how we can go about doing this, what the important factors are, and where I can educate myself on the alternatives that SAP offers.

Thanks,

-Kaare

[former_member282368]

Kaare,

One concept you should think about is the idea of allowing transaction systems (i.e. R/3) to send information as it is generated to an Operational Data Store using an EAI environment like XI. Then, when you need to batch extract processing, pull the data from the ODS instead of the active transaction system. This will reduce the load on the TPS while giving the most up-to-date data possible.

If the final result of the batch processing is a file of data to be batch loaded to the TPS, then consider if the data can be loaded more efficiently through a standard batch load, or by using a EAI tool to turn the batch load into messages to be processed like any other transaction.

Obviously there are other factors to consider, but this one jumped out based on your example.

Chris