B2B Monitoring & Archive for CPI

Storing and finding EDI files is an important part of B2B IT operations. For B2B operations people, It is a daily task to find an EDI message, type A from partner B that is sent C days ago, check the contents themselves or pass the file to business for further analysis.

Customers using legacy systems adapted their workflows and tools. Some even use grep on Linux which, I would say, is very capable. Giving fewer features and options than they are used to, will bring more workload to people in operations.

What are your alternatives now and in the future for SAP CPI?

1. MPL

You can use MPL(Message Processing Logs) to store files as attachments. It has a 1 GB logging limitation per day. They are deleted after 30 days by default. For message discovery, you should define clear flow names for integrations and you can store e.g. IDoc document number in SAP_ApplicationID. Your search options are using organized flows and using only one document number.

Edit(2020-09-14): To be able to search for more fields, you can also use Groovy to add CustomHeaderProperties and search them with APIs, there is no user interface yet.

2. Persist Message

Persist Message step doesn’t have the daily limitation but it also eats up space with runtime and MPL logs from the database. And CPI has a 32 GB database by default. If you use this step too much it can strain the database resources.

3. Future: Archiving on the roadmap

There is an archiving feature on the roadmap, and we are eagerly waiting for the feature to shape up.

Update: Archiving feature is released: https://help.sap.com/viewer/368c481cd6954bdfa5d0435479fd4eaf/Cloud/en-US/bc71f883d41a44098e9a525e34d0a318.html

Related blog post: https://blogs.sap.com/2021/10/01/data-archiving-with-sap-cloud-integration/

4. SFTP server

You can use an SFTP server to store the files. You can define a good directory structure.

5. Our Prebuilt Solution (Early Beta)

Now you have another alternative! We have built an EDI archive and search solution for SAP CPI.

It is designed to be performant, flexible, fault-tolerant, and to have little-to-no effect on runtime. The data is stored on your cloud account and under your provision.

The archive storage is as cheap, as scalable, and as durable as AWS or Azure storage services.

We can add more search options based on message metadata and payload.

We are always looking for ways to improve your complete integration workflow. We are ready to discuss your needs and how we can build better solutions together.

If you are interested, you can always contact me.

Thanks for reading!