Technical Articles
is “Integration Advisor” the only way to do B2B in SAP Integration Suite?
Hello hello,
This is blog is intended to improve as always the SAP Integration Suite ( our Swiss Knife in the cloud 🙂 ).
Today I bring you a very good question:
is “Integration Advisor” the only way to do B2B in SAP Integration Suite?.
I remember the first time I came across B2B at CPI, it was in December 2017, the way to create B2B interfaces was very rudimentary, and with the passage of time “SAP Integration Advisor” was acquiring more form to an interesting point that “SAP Trading Partner Management” was released a few days ago.
For whatever reason SAP wants to force us to use its MIGs, MAGs & XSLTs, totally ignoring everything that has been achieved in the last 10 years with the B2B Add-on in SAP Process Orchestration. Just to refresh our memory what can we do with the SAP PO B2B add-on:
- Use any kind of adapter to send & receive EDI files of our middleware( not only AS2,SOAP,IDOC )
- Use any kind of edi message type(not only edifact & x12 )
- Use any kind of xml message type
- Dynamic receiver determination
- Use any kind of mapping program( not only XSLTs )
- Use parameters anywhere( adapters, mappings, receiver determinations )
- Generate Inbound & Outbound Acks by configuration
- Split EDI messages
- Split XML messages
- Alert Framework
- Archive by configuration
- Cancel messages
- Retry messages
- View & Download message payloads
- Proper B2B message monitoring
I know that SAP was working in this new “SAP Trading Partner Management” solution for years, and after seen it I’m not “happy” with the delivered product, how is possible that “we” ( customers ) got such product, but instead of complaining WHAT IF I got down to work, would it be possible to create a framework that would do exactly what the SAP PO B2B add-on does, but for SAP Integration Suite?.
After a few “hours” of research, I put some SAP products ( SAP BTP, SAP Kyma, SAP CF, SAP Cloud Application Programming, SAP Fiori Elements, SAP HANA Cloud database, SAP Event Mesh, SAP API Management, SAP Cloud Integration, SAP Cloud Fiori Lauchpad) in the blender and this is the result:
Messages Analytics
Agreements Analytics
Partners Analytics
Launchpad
Endpoints
Mappings
Systems
Partners
Control Keys
Functional Profiles
Templates
Agreements
Messages
CONCLUSION
It’s more than possible to have “B2B” integrations in “SAP Integration Suite” without “MIGs,MAGs & XSLTs”, using the tools provided by “SAP Business Technology Platform”, it’s just a matter of wanting to do it.
A few open questions for the audience:
@SAP:
- Are you going to spend more time to deliver a proper B2B product and less in “MIGs,MAGs & XSLTs”?.
- There are countless SAP systems that work the same way in the cloud, why can’t we have our “TPM” in the same way?.
@Customers:
- What is your impression of the “SAP Trading Partner Management”?( link )
@ALL:
- Am I the only one waiting( for years ) for a proper B2B product in “SAP Integration Suite” to be able to migrate thousands of B2B interfaces?
Updates:
001- “Build & Deploy”:
002 – Tools “Tests” & “Parsers”:
003 – Agreements, Authorizations & Navigations:
004 – Tasks:
005 – Object Versions & Transports
006 – Notifications:
Not forget, be curious! 😉
Max.
Hi Max,
I would share that I'm just as "happy" with the delivery. As a past user of Process Orchestration I feel like the latest delivery falls short. I have two areas that are a huge disappointment (one I commented on the blog you linked).
My plan is to forego TPM because on account of these two limitations I don't like what was delivered - I'll build something more useful myself (cloud swiss army knife). Other shortcomings exist too like your mention of the limited adapter choices. I think it's an ok start but it's now been many years and I think we should be further along.
Regards,
Ryan Crosby