Enveloping and De-Enveloping configuration

[Former Member]

Dear SCN members,

Recently we managed to migrate a set of EDIFACT interfaces from a standalone B2B tool to SAP B2B add-on.

There were lot of challenges and learning as a part of the prototyping exercise.

One of the key design observation I want to highlight in the blog is the way Enveloping and De-enveloping of EDI messages are done in the standalone B2B tool.

There is a central configuration where the Envelope information (UNH, UNB in case of EDIFACT) could be configured.

The mapping or translation focused only on the transformation of business content whereas the Envelope configuration is holding the Trading Partner Ids, Control Numbers (Number Range objects), Delimiters, etc.. No tight coupling between the mapping and envelope parameters.

But in the SAP B2B add-on implementation with PI, even the UNH, UNB envelope information have to be populated in the message mapping.

So the message mapping has the responsibility of transforming the business content plus the envelope related details - Trading Partner Ids, Number Range objects, delimiters, etc..

Off-Course we can use a custom lookup solution or Value Mapping or TPM to store the Envelope related information and make them configurable.

We used the Value Mapping option to store and configure the UNH, UNB envelope related values.

But as a next step - Wouldn't that be useful to have a central/standard Envelope and De-envelope configuration as part of the SAP B2B add-on solution.

We could have both the option as we have for EDIDC control record of IDoc currently-

1) Either take the values from mapping or

2) From the central configuration

Appreciate your inputs and feedback.

Best Regards,

Sudharshan N A