Hi Guys,
this is more of a technical-architecture-philosophical type of post but is based on real-world scenarios.
I would appreciate very much your insights as a supportive community.
In some organizations I visit (mostly technology oriented ones) the Integration concepts of ESB and SAP PI are found
somewhat strange to the management and development teams.
As SAP PI and SOA concepts are "cast in concrete" facts, and are well known to us - integration consultants,
It always seems like the available Integration patterns + SAP PI Framework don't "deliver the goods" the customer wants.
It don't matter , how many times the patterns and SAP PI framework solutions are pitched,
its always drawn back to the old "Taylor made" solutions that some development manager is familiar with since the 80's.
In such cases , the SAP PI offcours -lacks and fails to deliver.
A subject in monitoring solution example :
An inbound FTP file to IDoc Scenario. basic!.
Our monitoring solution is :
on the Technical monitoring level
Partner -> FTP. - monitoring responsibility of the partner placing the FTP callcommunciation monitoring on the FTP protocol level .
FTP -> IDoc. - SAP PI technicalmonitoring responsibility. - Validation,mapping,routing,Quality of service,call adapter,ALEAUDIT (if needed)
now,
some IT organizations demands for a message back to be send by SAP PI to the partner during failure in each one of the processing steps mentioned above instead of referring them as internal technical issues aimed for the SAP PI 1st level support or development team.
in some steps ,like validation, SAP PI can support a Send-back validation error message out-of-the-box by the AE.
but again, this according to documentation relevant for sync. scenarios based on SOAP or 2 async scenarios for Industry standards like CIDEX and RNIF.
another supporting process is inbound EDIs like EDIFACT and X12 the in some tools can provide a 997.
Open quesitons are :
1.as we are dealing with an inbound flat file how can a message back to the partner can be generated during validation ?
2.is it a good practice at all in an inbound file scenario?
3.if validations failed, what data can be provided in the send-back message as it failed validation...
these quesions are also relevant for error message back during mapping,routing,queue stuck etc.
If you got to this point, I assume you experience similar issues in your projects. what is your stand\opinion\insights?