Integration Architechture Question

[wilsonrsantos]

Good Afternoon,

I have the folowing scenario: several desktops are running a software(installed locally in each desktop) and this software will communicate with SAP ECC using SAP Netweaver XI/PI, executing SOAP calls to XI/PI.

I know that this is possible(and very simple to do), and I think that it´s a normal architecture, but I received some indications to use a proxy application between the desktops running the software, and the SAP XI Server, so this proxy application(something like a java application running in a server like tomcat) intends to be used to centralize the calls from the desktops, and communicate with SAP XI. I can´t see any advantage or recommendation to use this scenario in this form, but I would like to hear another opinions, to discart the possibility that I´m not seeing all benefits.

What do you think about this ? There is any benefit in centralize the calls from several desktops to one proxy application, and this application be responsible to communication with XI ?

Thank you for your attention,

Wilson

[wilsonrsantos · Accepted solution]

A little observation: the communication between the software in the desktops and the proxy application, intended to be using SOAP, and the communication between the proxy application and SAP XI, in the same way(SOAP too).

Thanks in advance,

Wilson

[VijayKonam · Accepted solution]

As far as I see, it is adding another layer of Java or whatever in between and thus adding additional delay in processing of messages. Whether is is desktop or the java server if they are hitting XI for each and every call transparently this new layer is not more than a burden on development and maintenance.

If the design is something like the java layer caches the desktop requests for sometime and then calls the XI server once for many desktop requests, the round trips between XI and java server (or between XI and desktops) are minimized. This would make some sense to add an additional layer in between but obviously there will be a delay in processing the messages and for sync calls from desktops it is not recommended.

In my opinion, it does not make any sense to add a layer in between desktops and XI if the Java proxy layer is not doing anything other than a post man job.

VJ