Throughout the year 2006, the SAP Integration & Certification Center (ICC) engaged with a few Independent Solution Vendors (ISV) who signed up to create an adapter and have it certified for using with SAP's NetWeaver Exchange Infrastructure (XI). During this period, we'd confirmed that, as a matter of fact, most of the available adapters in SAP XIs Adapter Framework are sufficient to deal with the most common transport objects (e.g. file, HTTP, SOAP, etc.). A list of these adapters can be found at ~ SAP XI Adapters.
This BLOG provides a simple guideline to go through before creating a customized adapter to integrate with SAP XI.
These are some questions you should consider before deciding on such a course:
If most of these questions are relevant to you, the question might still come up, For what type of scenario do I need to develop a customized adapter and for what scenario can I simply provide SAP XI content and use a provided adapter? Consider the following two scenarios ...
In this first scenario, you simply need to provide SAP XI content which makes use of standard SAP XI adapters. The SAP XI content consists of design objects (e.g. integration scenarios, integration processes, message interfaces, messages, data types, interface and message mappings) imported into the Integration Repository under your own namespace. It enables your external system to make a BAPI call into an SAP system using both the SOAP and RFC adapters.
Since this scenario made use of standard SAP adapters, no customized adapter was necessary.
The second scenario involves providing both a specialized adapter and business content. This scenario is represented by the SAP CIDX Business Package (Chemical Industry Data Exchange).
As background, CIDX is an organization that focuses on developing eBusiness standards, called Chem eStandards, for the chemical industry. These standards have become the de facto standards for transacting business electronically in the chemical industry.
This SAP CIDX business package provides the necessary components that enable an SAP application to transact with a business partner using CIDX defined standards.
The CIDX business package includes the following items:
The adapter itself provides the following functionalities:
In this context, the adapter enables functionality at a lower message and session level (e.g. processing communication protocols, security, interface semantics, etc). If needed, it could also provide further security handling and logging functions.
Higher level functionality is enabled by the business content part of the package. This includes message definitions, mappings, and business scenarios as mentioned in Scenario A. The content is imported directly into the Integration Repository.
To enable CIDX scenario, you need both adapter and business content. From this example, you can see that if your application implements an industry standard or a unique messaging protocol, you may need to provide a specialized adapter. If low level functionality can be handled by existing adapters, you may just need to provide the business content to map messages or enable a business scenario.
Here are some helpful links and the available on-line material to begin with:
or
http://help.sap.com -> Documentation -> SAP NetWeaver -> SAP NetWeaver 2004 -> choose English or German (under SAP NetWeaver 2004 (SPS 19)) -> SAP NetWeaver -> Process Integration -> SAP Exchange Infrastructure -> Runtime -> Connectivity -> Partner Connectivity Kit -> Adapter and Module Development
We encourage everyone to use one of the most resourceful collaboration portals, the SAP Developer Network (SDN), as a place to seek more assistance:
Here are some Blogs about creating XI content and XI adapter which I have located:
Once you have decided that it makes sense to create an SAP XI Adapter, please consider signing up to have it certified by SAP ICC. The following are the different types of SAP XI related certifications to choose from
SAP NetWeaver Exchange Infrastructure (XI) certifications options:
There are two ways to approach certification. Your company should consider whether to first build the SAP XI adapter and then approach the ICC to have it certified; or you can initiate a contract with ICC and have them walk your company through the whole development and certification process. Below is a chart of the pros of both methods:
Develop and contact ICC | Contact ICC and develop |
If you have past experience with XI adapter development | If this is your first time creating an XI adapter |
If you want to ensure that your XI adapter meets the required standard for certification | |
If you need additional integration consulting | |
If you want to have a dedicated SAP contact to bounce questions off from |
Upon successful implementation and certification, your custom SAP XI adapter your company built will be listed on SAPs Partner Information Center as an optional available adapter to other vendors. However, vendors will need to contact the respective adapter owners for usage. Lastly and most importantly, you will receive the Power By NetWeaver (PBNW) logo; And, you can announce that your custom adapter is SAP certified and can be integrated into any one of SAPs huge customer base!
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