Seeburger - Part 1 - The Basics

[prateek]

Seeburger is a much talked about topic these days or let's say since quite a few days. But there is very little information available on SDN when it comes to various aspects of Seeburger. Therefore I thought of compiling the related information and adding it up to one place. I will consider that the readers are comfortable with basic PI terminologies and EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) to some extent. We will start with what Seeburger mean to a PI consultant.

EDI format are widely accepted across the globe for both inter and intra organizational business information exchange. SAP PI being the long term strategic integration solution promoted by SAP should incorporate the capabilities to communicate this EDI format through them. However, there is no EDI communication specific adapter which is delivered as part of standard PI license.

Therefore the options that lies are:

1. Create an adapter module that incorporates all the EDI parsers capabilities to convert specific EDI format into EDI-xml or vice-versa.                                   

The Dark Side: The problem with this approach is that even if you are able to convert the EDI-xml to EDI or vice-versa, you are still missing the protocol that will be used for communication e.g. AS2, X400. Another problem is that you need to create the adapter module for various kind of EDI format like EDIFACT, X12, TRADACOMS etc

2. Use Conversion Agent for converting EDI into EDI-xml and vice-versa.

The Dark Side: The issue with this approach is same as that of first case.

3. Create your own adapter.                                                                         

The Dark Side: Only issue with this approach is if your organization uses multiple protocols with their customers, then it would mean that multiple custom adapters need to be created for each protocol. This would delay the overall project timeline certainly by months.

4. Purchase a third-party adapter. Seeburger, being a market leader in providing EDI related solutions, has exposed a rich set of EDI adapters which gets integrated to SAP PI adapter engine seamlessly. Seeburger adapters are SAP certified and are now widely used by Customers enhancing their PI capabilities.

Seeburger have middleware of their own called as Seeburger BIS (Business Integration Server) which could work independent of SAP PI. However, my discussions will be concentrated on only those parts of Seeburger (adapters) which are applicable to SAP PI based EDI communication using Seeburger adapter suite. The versions of Seeburger adapters that are widely used these days with XI 3.0 and PI 7.0 are of 1.X series 1.8 being the latest. With PI 7.1, 2.X version of Seeburger has evolved which incorporated the adapter engine specific changes that were required with PI 7.1.

We will now have a look at the few resources provided by SAP with regards to Seeburger adapters:

• List of available adapters                                                                         
• Product Availability Matrix
• Download Seeburger Adapter (SMP login required) > Download > Installations and Upgrades > Entry by Application Group > Adapters

Note: Before downloading make sure that you have purchased Seeburger license. Otherwise you won't be able to find required links.

Now you have the basic information about Seeburger adapters for SAP PI. I will discuss about components specific details in further blogs.

1. Seeburger - Part 2 - Seeburger Workbench
2. Seeburger - Part 3 - Addressbooks
3. Seeburger - Part 4 - Message Monitor
4. Seeburger - Part 5 - Message Recovery
5. Seeburger - Part 6 – Classify & Split Secret