XI – SAP Business Connector integration using the HTTP adapter

Introduction

The SAP Business Connector (BC) is used in a large number of SAP production environments. SAP Business Connector will probably be gradually phased out and replaced by SAP XI technology. For the short term SAP Business connector and SAP XI will inevitably continue to coexist in companies IT landscapes.

This weblog presents the components and steps required to set-up a SAP XI <-> SAP BC integration scenario using HTTP protocol.

Use case

A company has selected SAP XI 3.0 as its application and business process integration platform.

The company has several processes running with SAP Business Connector. Considering the project scope, timeframe and resources the existing SAP Business Connector interfaces will be maintained and supported. Therefore new SAP XI interfaces and existing SAP Business Connector will coexist in the IT landscape.

The company is looking for a solution to integrate SAP XI and SAP Business Connector and decides to build a prototype based on HTTP protocol.

Components

The user will issue an HTTP request with a simple internet browser form. The request is processed by SAP XI and transmitted to SAP Business Connector. The SAP Business Connector processes the request and sends back a response to SAP XI. The response is displayed in the internet browser.

Configure the SAP BC

We have to set-up and activate the routing rule. In the example we will call the BC service recordToDocument.

Create the HTTP destination

We have to create an external HTTP connection to the Business Connector server. The communication channel will point to this external HTTP destination. We can use the transaction SM59:

Create XI objects

We create the following repository objects:
– Message_XML_Content
– Data_Type_XML
– Interface_Browser_Out (synchronous)
– Interface_Http_BC_In (synchronous)

We create the corresponding receiver determination, interface determination, receiver agreements:

The Prolog and Epilog fields allow formatting the HTTP request. In our case the XML document content is passed in the variable $xmlData.

For a more detailed description of the configuration steps and for code examples you can read the SDN article Integrating SAP Business Connector with SAP XI.

5 Comments

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Michal Krawczyk July 10, 2006 at 1:15 pm

Hi,

so why did you post this weblog?
since it contains the same info as this document:
https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/servlet/prt/portal/prtroot/com.sap.km.cm.docs/library/uuid/96ed2129-0b01-0010-2e91-c45e1fad0d03
?

you not only use the same screenshots
but provide the same information
so what’s the purpose?

Regards,
michal

like (0)
1. Marilyn Pratt July 10, 2006 at 2:34 pm
  
  There is a code sample in the link. The blog highlights this. Since this was not featured on the pages of XI when it was released, it looks like the author found a way to draw attention to his own submitted contents in the blog.
  The “article”, is more expansive because of the coding. But in general, I do agree that we don’t like to replicate contents. At least the author is quoting his own submission 🙂
  
  cheers,
  Marilyn
  
  like (0)
  1. Former Member July 10, 2006 at 8:54 pm
    
    We, SDN, actually tell people to blog about articles they have written so we can’t really look too harshly on this – they link to their article and they talk about it, now they can hopefully get good constructive feedback on it.
    
    SDN Tips: “Making my article more visible”
    
    Craig
    
    like (0)
2. July 11, 2006 at 8:59 am
  
  Hi,
  
  While i do agree in blogging and posting in the forums about the article, this blog i tend to agree with Michel. The current blog is part of the authors own article(a good one).
  
  The current blog is not providing any additional information than that is available in the article. A blog would have been useful if the author forgot to mention something in the article but put in the extra stuff in the blog with a reference to original article.
  
  If this was to get more attention towards the article, then the author is very successful. But if this is for the additional points then hmm… I will let SND decide on this.
  
  Cheers,
  Naveen
  
  like (0)
  1. Former Member July 11, 2006 at 11:43 am
    
    In cases like this where the author is taking our advice to ensure visibility of their articles they get no additional points for their blog only the standard unless the blog is given more value than the article already has.
    
    Craig
    
    like (0)