Introduction :

               The Top five reasons can be considered to upgrade to PI 7.3 /  PO 7.3

1. Repository and Governance
2. Enhanced Service Bus Capabilities
3. Centralized Monitoring Environment
4. Improved Fault Tolerance
5. Integration Engine Improvements

Repository and Governance

Improved design governance

Unified event provisioning and subscription

ESB

Single stack ESB capabilities via AAE

Eclipse-based design time for service      

Increased productivity & richer connectivity on AAE        

Adoption of standards (SOAP 1.2, WS Policy 1.2, WS Trust 1.3 …)    

Support of joint shop floor integration and A2A/SOA use cases

Unified Lifecycle Management

Central monitoring via SAP Solution Manager (PI Workcenter)

Improved upgrade and fault tolerance

1) Repository and Governance

       

Key governance features

• Extend pre-delivered entities (e.g. service interface) with custom attributes
• Define custom lifecycle for assets including possible transitions and authorizations
• Subscribe to object changes to be notified via e-mail on specific actions
• Web-based UI for specifically addressing scenarios relevant for non-technical users

Editors in Eclipse

• NWDS-based editors for creating and editing service interface and data type
• Support to use Eclipse based standard editors for viewing ES Repository content
• Subscribe to object changes via ES browser in NWDS

Improved roles and authorizations

• Fine-granular permissions to enable definition of customized roles
• Improved logging to ensure transparency
• Enable / disable advanced capabilities through pre-delivered configuration wizard

Performing state transition

• Supported through Custom Attribute Editors in ES Builder and NWDS
• Specific support to modify Lifecycle Attributes through ESR Web UI (for architects, Biz users)
• Possible values calculated based on defined transitions and authorizations

Subscribing to changes in ESR objects

• Subscribe to changes to individual objects in the ESR
• Support for subscribing to object-specific actions (Publish, Classify)
• Notification via E-mail to default (UME) or custom e-mail ID

Receiving Notification via e-mail

• Support to customize content and layout of the notification e-mail
• Built-in link to open the object through the ESR Web UI

Web-based UI for ES Repository

• Web-based user interface to enable quick access to ESR objects
• Supports key capabilities including –Viewing objects, Search and Subscription
• Support for changing lifecycle status focused towards Business User

2) Enhanced Service Bus Capabilities

Single stack ESB capabilities via AAE

AAE with local ES Repository and Integration Directory

Increased productivity and richer connectivity on AAE

• IDoc-and HTTP-adapters in AAE
• Multi-mapping message split on AAE
• XI message packaging on AAE
• Large (binary) file-to-file transfer
• Configurable JDBC message size limits
• Time-out  config. per comm. channel
• Java proxy generation in NWDS
• Automated Transport for Schema Validation
• Increased Integration Directory API support
• Increased configuration capabilities

Increased standards based interoperability

• Publish and subscribe messaging for JMS Topics
• Support for SOAP 1.2, WS Policy 1.2, WS Trust 1.3, Java SE6
• WS-RM based interoperability with Microsoft .NET 3.5, 4

Runtime Architecture in a Nutshell

         

As of 7.3 SAP NetWeaver PI supports 2 deployment options:

Full Integration Server, two stacks

ABAP:

– Integration Engine (IE) (messaging +connectivity)

– BPE (ccBPM)

 

Java :

– AEX(messaging + connectivity)

Standalone AEX: Java Stack only

– Both deployment options can be combined

– Decentralized AEX deployment is supported

New Adapters on AAE

         

• New IDoc and HTTP adapter functionality available in AAE (from 7.30)
• JCA resource adapters (like all other AAE adapters) leveraging Adapter Framework
• Now additional scenarios can take advantage of AAE benefits (e.g. performance, distributed processing)

Java IDoc Adapter –Overview

• Enables IDoc connectivity for “local” AAE processing (as well as “classic”)
• Integrated with channel monitoring for administration (unavailable for ABAP-based adapters)
• Specific IDoc Monitor for monitoring IDoc message traffic and metadata processed on AAE
• Supports sender IDoc Packaging and IDoc flat file modules introduced in 7.1 EHP1
• Integrated with RFC destinations in NWA (reuse connection across channels)
• Metadata connection details can be provided in the channel (in addition to default)
• ALEAUD support

Java HTTP Adapter –Overview

• HTTP POST
• Quality of Service (BE, EO, and EOIO)
• Secure communication via SSL
• Adapter-specific message attributes (Dynamic Configuration)
• HTTP 1.1
• HTTP GET
• Multipart documents
• Form submission
• Attachments
• System Acknowledgement (positive & negative)

Large (Binary) File-To-File Transfer

• Improved system robustness and reliability during large data transfer
• Enhanced capabilities to copy very large files between locations (file share, FTP)
• Data streaming mechanism available for File/FTP adapter
• Complete document is not stored in memory
• Configurable byte length of transferred chunks
• File chunks are merged on the receiver side

Publish / Subscribe Messaging via JMS Topics

• A wider variety of options for standards based integration to leverage current IT investments
• Support for JMS topics for the JMS sender and receiver adapter to enable pub/sub scenarios:
• Subscribe: Once a message is published by a JMS provider for a subscribed topic, the message is fetched and processed via SAP NetWeaver PI
• Publish: SAP NetWeaver PI allows publishing messages to a JMS provider, such as SAP’s JMS provider
• Support for durable subscriptions only

3) Centralized Monitoring Environment

Greater visibility into the SOA landscape through a centralized monitoring environment

• PI monitoring Good Morning page in SAP Solution Manager*
• PI scenarios visible within SAP Solution Manager* (for documentation)
• New / enhanced monitoring capabilities
• Optional additional message persistence on AAE
• Enhanced logging on AS Java

Flexible upgrade paths

• SAP XI 3.0
• SAP NetWeaver PI 7.0 incl. EHP 1, EHP 2
• SAP NetWeaver PI 7.1 incl. EHP 1

SAP NetWeaver PI Dual Level Monitoring

• Central Tools:
• Unified information
• High frequency snapshots
• Isolated runtime environment
• Preprocessed, summarized & correlated information
• Local Tools:
• Real-timeinformation access
• Detail level information (incl. payload)

SAP NetWeaver PI 7.3 New Local Monitoring Tools

  

SAP NetWeaver PI 7.3 –Key New Monitoring Features

 

4) Improved Fault Tolerance

• Lower memory consumption and performance optimization of cache refresh
• Optimized message processing with improved cluster communication and EOIO handling
• “Safe Mode” during startup
• Configuration Wizard with system parameters settings

CPA Cache Refresh

• CPA (Collaboration Profile Agreement) cache is ES Repository and Integration Directory content compiled into runtime objects
• Refresh triggered by change lists activation in Integration Directory and ES Repository (for runtime-relevant objects like mappings, adapter metadata, etc.)
• Optimized object loading during full cache refresh using temporary files, cache queries in memory
• Changed CPA cache refresh update on Adapter Engine leads to less memory consumption and less communication over server nodes

5) Integration Engine Improvements

IE Messaging –Queues Balancing

• Sometimes messages behind big messages spend much time waiting even if other queues are available to process. This behaviour usually causes disruption in EO messages order. Now there’s a logic to rebalance the queues

IE Messaging –Queues Balancing

• Exploit all available queues
• Prevent unnecessary wait time
• Keep message rather ordered
• Messages from longer queues are reassigned to other shorter queues
• Parameters in Integration Engine (TUNING)

The goal of the document is to help make users aware of the Top 5 Reasons to upgrade to PI 7.3 / PO 7.3. The user can follow the suggestions provided by the document which should be supplemented with additional information. The suggestion provided by the document may vary as per the project requirement.

SAP Help, at http://help.sap.com, provides official documentation from SAP. It is structured help that is indexed and includes diagrams to illustrate key points. This site is open to the public; no login information is required.

My sincere thanks to Alexander Bundschuh for sharing his knowledge for the above blog. Product management  for Process Integration contact :  Alexander Bundschuh,

Reference : SAP Help, at http://help.sap.com and from product management team