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Author's profile photo Joerg Ackermann

Integration Advisor – Odette Message Standard

I am happy to share with you one more update to the B2B offerings of SAP Integration Advisor and SAP Cloud Integration: Odette Message Standard is now supported. In this blog post I want to give you a short overview of this message standard and how to use it.

Odette Library in Integration Advisor

The Odette Message Standard consists of the early Odette messages and codelists which were defined by Odette in the 1980s and 1990s and are used in the European automotive industry.

These messages are based on the Edifact syntax (ISO 9735) but they are not derived from the Edifact messages but are independent message type definitions.

Please note that newer Odette offerings are based directly on Edifact and form a so called Edifact subset. These “Odette Edifact” messages constitute a separate B2B Library and we plan to add them in the near future to the Integration Advisor content.

Versioning of Odette Messages

Odette versioning strategy is different to Edifact release strategy.

Edifact publishes so called release versions (for example D.01B or D.16A) which contain all artefacts (messages, segments, data elements and codelists) at a given time. Each such release forms a complete content package and single artefacts (like messages) might or might not have changed compared to the release before.

The Odette Message Standard, however, versioned all their messages and segments separately. For example, “ORDERR:2” in above screenshot represents the message ORDERR in version 2.

Due to this versioning strategy and the fact that no updates to the Odette messages are expected, you will find all definitions together in one version called “All”.

This version “All” contains 26 different messages. For most of them the newest version is provided while for messages CONTRL and ORDERR both versions 1 and 2 are available.

Similarly to messages, segments were explicitly versioned. For example, “REP:1” represents segment REP in version 1. Composites and Data Elements were not explicitly versioned. However, Integration Advisor shows a version 1 annotation for some of the composites and data elements in cases where message “ORDERR:1” required them in a different way.

Odette Usage in SAP Cloud Integration

SAP Cloud Integration was extended as well to support the processing of Odette Messages.

As the Odette messages are based on the Edifact syntax (ISO 9735),  you can configure your Integration Flow very similarly as you would for UN/EDIFACT.

On the SAP API Business Hub you find Template Flows for the common B2B Libraries / Type Systems:  https://api.sap.com/package/ICAPrepackagedContent?section=Artifacts. In order to process Odette messages, simply copy the provided templates flows for UN/EDIFACT. 

In your EDI Flow Steps (within your Integration Flow) you need to refer to the XSD for your Odette message. These XSDs will be created by Integration Advisor as part of the Runtime Export. The file names of these XSDs follow a standard naming convention: For example, ORDERR:2 message is exported as ODETTE_ORDERR_2.xsd.

Conclusion

With this new feature we now support the Odette Message Standard. You get an end-to-end solution where you can view and customize Odette messages in SAP Integration Advisor and convert such messages in SAP Cloud Integration.

Further reading

https://blogs.sap.com/2018/07/13/integration-content-advisor-create-a-customized-interface-using-mig-editor/

https://blogs.sap.com/2019/12/09/integration-advisor-the-precision-of-semantics-use-of-qualifiers/

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      2 Comments
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      Author's profile photo Dinesh M
      Dinesh M

      Hi Joerg ,

      While generating Runtime Artifacts, is it mandatory to provide data of specific flat file using "MIG Codelists" because I created 810 invoice template without creating "MIG Codelists" and getting error while I pass data in EDI to XML conversion. Please provide your inputs

      Thanks,

      Dinesh

       

      Author's profile photo Joerg Ackermann
      Joerg Ackermann
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Dinesh,

      thanks for contacting us about EDI features in Integration Suite (Integration Advisor and Cloud Integration).

      I am not sure if I understand your question completely.

      Integration Advisor provides message standards (like Odette, but also Edifact or X12) including codelists as defined by the standard. They can be used out-of-the-box and you don't need to define MIG Codelists if you want to go by the standard. MIG Codelists can be used if you want to have your own code values which you want to use. They can be used both at places where the standard does not have a codelist or as replacement for places where the standard has a non-suitable codelist.

      But I am not sure about the relationship to the EDI to XML conversion and how MIG Codelists would affect this. If you have issues with the EDI to XML conversion, you might want to open a support ticket or try to get support from the community.

      Best regards,

      Jörg