SAP Pipeline Concept and B2B TPM testing

[MichalKrawczyk]

Abstract

With the introduction of the SAP Pipeline Concept we now have a second large use case apart from B2B-TPM which allows processing different types of messages with a set of predefined generic iflows. This blog will show a few ways how automated testing of such scenarios can be set up of the box with Int4 Shield - SAP Integration Suite testing platform and how SAP Integration Suite customers already use it for such scenarios.

SAP Pipeline Concept and B2B TPM - multiple iflows

In the pipeline concept, each step corresponds to an integration flow (generic integration flows and scenario-specific integration flows). The generic integration flows are used across all integration scenarios and must only be deployed once while scenario-specific integration flows handle the scenario-specific message conversions and mappings.

File Source: https://community.sap.com/t5/technology-blogs-by-sap/introducing-the-new-pipeline-concept-in-cloud-i...

Similarly the B2B-TPM the exchange is divided into sender communication iflows, interchange processing and receiver iflows.

File source: https://community.sap.com/t5/technology-blogs-by-sap/use-tpm-ia-ci-to-efficiently-manage-and-run-com...

Cloud integration is very flexible in terms of modeling and running your integration scenarios allowing the design of a rich variety of integration patterns on the other hand for some types of scenarios we may want to use a more "formal" way or processing and this is there SAP Pipeline Concept and B2B-TPM scenarios come in handy with some of it's common advantages:

a) Provide commonly used restart capabilities
b) Simplifies operations by separating errors into different generic queues
c) Require lower number of JMS queues to take into account the resource limits
d) Simplify monitoring operations
e) Allow reusability of artifacts across multiple flows by using generic (Pipeline or TPM) iflow concept

SAP Pipeline Concept and B2B TPM - testing

Since those two frameworks are going to be used more and more and they involve several iflows to be tested
is there any way to automate the testing of such integration processes? With Int4 Shield - SAP Integration Suite testing platform, there out of the box we have several ways to implement automated testing of the SAP Pipeline Concept and B2B TPM. Let me explain, how they work.

Step 1

In both SAP Pipeline Concept and B2B TPM we're working with multiple iflows so we may want to inject the test messages into a specific iflow. This can be the first iflows but does not have to be as we may want to skip testing the initial iflow in some cases.

Figure - Int4 Shield inject test message options 

Step 2

Now we need to decide what do we want to test. What are the options? Basically two:

a) we can either test the whole framework (SAP Pipeline Concept and B2B TPM ) from start to finish

b) we may want to test specific iflows of the whole framework (SAP Pipeline Concept and B2B TPM)

For this purpose Int4 Shield automatically enables Trace monitoring level on tested iFlows to be able to introspect processing inside of these steps.
Thanks to this Int4 Shield can validate payload content at any single execution block of the processing steps.

Figure - Int4 Shield inject test message and trace start with validation options 

Step 3

Scenario 1 (single automation object) - for simple black box testing, Int4 Shield injects the message in the initial step and awaits for logs and payload to arrive at the final processing step, capturing the output payload, as it would be sent to a target system. Single test case and single automation object is sufficient for test and validation.

Figure - Int4 Shield validation option with a single automation object 

Scenario 2 (combination of automation objects - API workflows testing) - thorough testing is made possible with more test cases that execute more validation steps. In a typical scenario there is separate validation of Step 2 - to check if payload input was properly processed by Step 1 logic, and for Step 3 - to validate the output payload after mapping is correct and routed to the expected channel.


Figure - Int4 Shield validation option with a a combination of automation objects - API workflow testing 

SAP Pipeline Concept and B2B TPM - framework support

Int4 Shied testing concept for SAP Pipeline Concept and B2B TPM supports:

a) Multiple adapter types : SFTP, JMS, HTTP, IDOC, ProcessDirect, SOAP
b) Enabling unit testing of specific flow components
c) Testing business flows with Inputs and Outputs from different iFlows
d) Test complete SAP Pipeline Concept and B2B TPM execution with one test case
e) Capture and test intermediate results from specific iFlow steps
f) Test complete SAP Pipeline Concept and B2B TPM execution, validating document flow through the iFlows
g) Massive and automated test case creation
h) Test case loader - mass load of test files
i) Robotic crawler - automatic capture of historical data from another integration platform
j) Test scenario builder - linking multiple test cases into test scenarios automatically based on message content (e.g. document numbers)

Additional resources

B2B/TPM on SAP BTP Integration Suite migration (SAP PO, Boomi, EDI Providers and home-grown apps)

Int4 Suite for SAP BTP Integration Suite testing fully integrated with SAP Cloud ALM 

4 big waves for API led strategies and SAP BTP Integration Suite explosive growth 

There is no AI without API - Integration is the backbone of digital transformations