integration content advisor: Overview of components and further reading

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Introduction

The integration content advisor of SAP Cloud Platform isn’t just a mapping tool; it’s a cloud- and crowd-based design time for creating and maintaining integration content, independent of the platform on which the content is processed. The main purpose of the integration content advisor is to provide intelligent and efficient content creation and maintenance at the business domain level to support experts and citizen integrators. Artificial intelligence (AI) supports the entire approach for reaching the aim much faster, more flexibly, and with significantly higher quality.

As shown in Figure 1, the integration content advisor unifies all the necessary components with a strong focus on usability, understandability, reusability, flexibility, transparency, and speed. The advisor supports all kinds of integration content, whether app-to-app (A2A), business-to-business (B2B), or business-to-government (B2G).



Figure 1: Components of Integration Content Advisor

This post includes a short overview for each of the five components and provides the most current links to more detailed blogs and further information.

General Information

There are number of blogs and videos available describing the general approach about the integration content advisor and its advantages

Related information: Announcement: New integration content advisor for SAP Cloud Platform Integration SAP Help Portal – integration content advisor for SAP Cloud Platform Integration Integration Advisor – Integration game changer! Related videos: Integration Content Advisor: Overview

Library of Type Systems

The library of type systems is a centrally located collection of B2B, B2G, or A2A type systems. A type system has two main aspects: The rules and the methodology for defining the syntax, structure, and naming of message interfaces, APIs, and data types, and The library of message interfaces, data types, and codelists that are based on these rules and maintained by a responsible agency. The integration content advisor is agnostic of any platform-dependent representations; it supports de-facto standards like SAP IDoc, SAP SOAP, or B2B / B2G standards like UN/EDIFACT, ASC X12, OAGI, or UBL. These type systems support the creation of custom interfaces by providing all of the most up-to-date content, saving you from having to search in many different places, including hardcopies! For each type system, you’ll find the all the available and necessary: Versions Templates and recommendations for message interfaces Reusable complex types which can be used to assemble message interfaces Reusable simple types, which provide the reusable constraints of leaf nodes in message interfaces Codelists that are used in message interfaces and simple types You'll not only find the structures of these parts: the advisor also provides all the necessary information for creating and maintaining your customized interfaces and APIs, such as complete documentation, constraints, rules, notes, and references to codelists.

Related information: Discover B2B/A2A standard libraries List of provided type systems Integration Advisor – Latest B2B/A2A Libraries for creating and maintaining your customized interfac... SAP S/4 HANA and Ariba’s cXML type system/type system libraries now available at Integration Content... Related videos: Library of Type Systems

Message Implementation Guidelines

A message implementation guideline (MIG) provides all the information that’s needed to implement a customized message interface using a certain type system in a certain business context. The user or implementer won’t need to reference any other documents or sources and this guideline can be unambiguously understood by every user who’s involved in a process. Use a MIG to unambiguously define the meaning of each customized node and provide further instructions for implementing the message interface as well as for processing and validating the payload that’s based on the message interface. Users are supported by all the content that’s provided by the library of type systems and by the intelligent proposal service for creating new message implementation guidelines.

Related information: Create a customized interface using MIG editor The importance of customized codelists in MIGs Related videos: Create a new MIG (option 1) Create a new MIG (option 2) Edit Mode and Overview Tab of MIG Navigate through the structure of MIG Customize the structure of a MIG Get proposal of MIG Create and Add a Local Codelist Manually set qualified variations in your MIG Change simple type properties in a MIG Notes in MIG Export MIG Documentation

Mapping Guidelines

A mapping guideline (MAG) is based on a source and a target message implementation guideline. It demonstrates how the defined nodes at each side are mapped, describing all mapping elements in detail with definitions or notes and providing further instructions for the transformation, such as functions or code value mappings. The focus is not only on the technical feasibility on runtime. The documentation also plays an important role, so that all involved users can unambiguously understand the mapping guidelines. The machine learning based proposal service significantly accelerates the creation of mapping guidelines. An embedded simulation feature shows mapping results directly in the guideline, saving the external testing of a generated mapping on a runtime such as SAP Cloud Platform Integration or SAP Process Orchestration.

Related information: Integration Content Advisor: Create a mapping using MAG editor integration content advisor – Quickly create your individual code value mappings in MAGs Related videos: Create a new MAG Edit Mode and Overview Tab of a MAG Manual creation of mapping nodes in MAG Get Proposal and Select Best Proposal in a MAG Get Proposal and Clear Proposal in a MAG Functions in a MAG Notes in a MAG Simulate the scenario Activate the scenario Export MAG Documentation

Runtime Artifacts

The advisor automatically generates a number of schemes, scripts, and examples from a mapping guideline, including: Schemes for syntax conversion, such as from EDI syntax to XML or vice versa Schemes for precise payload validation against the rules and constraints defined in the message implementation guidelines Pre- and post-processing scripts for presorting payloads or enriching them with additional required information for the mapping Examples for testing the artifacts in the runtime Without the integration content advisor, all of these schemes, scripts, or payloads must be created separately and manually. Automatic generation is a particularly enormous time saving.

Related information: <TBD> Related videos: Export MAG Runtime Artifacts

Runtime/Implementation Support

The integration content advisor works with any kind of interface/API format; its automatically generated artifacts can be used in a variety of runtimes or implementations. Each different runtime has specific approaches, formats, pre-conditions, and implementation instructions. These must be considered, if the  advisor's generated runtime artifacts are implemented into these runtimes and if the involved applications will be connected. SAP's intention is to provide templates and mechanisms that accelerate the onboarding of the advisor’s runtime artifacts into the diverse supported runtime systems such as: SAP Cloud Platform Integration, and SAP Process Orchestration.

Related information: Support SAP Process Integration/Process Orchestration with Integration Content Advisor Related videos: Integration Flow in SAP Cloud Platform Integration (CPI)

Summary

This post completes, for now, the series of blogs and information that explains the power of  Integration Content Advisor for SAP Cloud Platform so you can use it for your own purposes. But there are still brilliant, game-changing approaches for accelerating integration content development in our backlog. Once they’re released, you'll find an update here. So, stay tuned.