Message mapping approach

[Former Member]

Hi Experts,

I need to get your suggestions on mapping approaches in PI. We're doing EDI with PI7.1 with Seeburger Adapter.

We are in design phase. We're making design decisions now and the question came up whether we should build one map per IDoc-Partner-X12 transaction or one map per X12 transaction-Idoc pair and build in logic to take care of partner specific requirements.

Can you suggest what is best approach.

Your help is appreciated

Thanks,

Kishore

[holger_stumm2 · Accepted solution]

Hi,

it is a broad question with no general answer.

First, it is a question of "How Much"?. If you have dozens of Partners and a lot of special requirements, than you are better up with a dedicated mapping per situation.

We also have done this with a two-step approach: One generic Maping for all, and a specific mapping per customer as a second additional step in message mapping, where every customer has its own name space.

This requires a very good design, a good planning and pattern-oriented solution and a very tight execution and overall architecture and quality control, to not get out of hand. There are some good books and blogs about enterprise patterns in EAI that will help here.

There are a lot of possibilties, but , nothing that fits easily in a short forum answer.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Holger,

Thanks for your response.

Do you have any blogs or books info on this topic.

Kishore

[holger_stumm2 · Accepted solution]

Hi,

one blog like this is on my list, but probably in September 2010 .

There is one "classical" book, not PI specific, but very good:

"Enterprise Integration Patterns" by Hohpe and Woolf (Addisson Wesley)

and a very good book for PI, but only in German:

"Enterprise Integration Pattern für PI" Daniel/Steinrötter SAPPress Galileo

(It refers a lot to the Hohpe/Woolf book)

and the motherbook of all patterns:

"Gang of Five": Gamma et al, Design Patterns: Elements of Reuse in Object Oriented Software;

[Former Member]

Kishore,

With my experience if your EDI partners are suppliers/vendors then you maintain one mapping and configure partners based on their AS2ID's or sender id's. however if its customer then better use individual maps for each customer.

Regards,

Pavan

[Former Member]

Hi pavan,

All our EDI partners are customers, we need to follow customer specs.

What do you mean by configure partners by AS2 ID or sender ID

Thanks,

Kishore

[Former Member]

Hi Kishore,

It entirely depends upon your requirements. Try to minimize the number of mappings as it would be hard to maintain them once it goes to production. If you are trying to have in one map then the complexity starts increasing. So you need to have an approach probably for every 4 or 5 customers one map. Ideally you can create one map to customers who have similar requirements with slight change. So a mixture of both the approaches will always be a good design.

The only book on SAP XI B2B integration we have is sam's/claus book:

http://www.edv-buchversand.de/sap/product.php?cnt=product&id=gp-9163

Regards,

---Satish

[Former Member]

Thanks Satish for your suggestions. I will work on finding out the common requirements and layout for different customers to make less no of maps.

Kishore

[Former Member]

Any suggestions...