Why no MI for IDOC?

[Former Member]

Hi,

Why message interface is not needed for an IDOC? I just know that IDOC acts as DT , MT and MI. Can anyone give a brief idea what happens internally to XI when it comes to IDOC?

Thanks,

Vishal.

[former_member181962 · Accepted solution]

HI Vishal,

The IDOC that you import into your XI system is based on something called the IDOC type(Basic type) and the Message type in R/3.

The IDOC type defines the structure of the idoc and is equivalent to the data Type in IR.

The message type(In R/3 system) is the actual container that would contain the data at runtime.

This plays the role of your Message type(XI-IR).

Coming to the message interface, basically a message interface indicates two things.

1) Communication Mode (Async or sync). Idocs are by defualt asynchronous and so, there is no need to specify the communication mode.

2) Direction (Inbound, Outbound). The idocs can be used oth as inbound and outbound. The behavior of a particular idoc is determined based on how it is used in a mapping.(Inbound if it is used as target and outbound if used as source).So, there is no need to specify this information also.

So, the two things that a MI indicate are implicity addressed in a IDOC and hence we would not need a Message Interface for a IDOC.

Regards,

Ravi Kanth Talagana

[Former Member]

Why Message Interface is Used?

It is used to exchange the message between sender and receiver.

Here Idoc is used to exchange the message.And you might have already read the above answers and I think you have understood why no MI for Idoc

[Former Member]

Hi Vishal,

Why message interface is not needed for an IDOC?I just know that IDOC acts as DT , MT and MI. Can anyone give a brief idea what happens internally to XI when it comes to IDOC?

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw04/helpdata/en/13/95244269625633e10000000a155106/frameset.htm

**********************************************************************************************************************

The messages exchanged between systems are of various message types. The message type depends on the data contained and the process involved. It determines the technical structure of the message, the IDoc type. For example, the FIDCMT message type is used for journal messages.

The IDoc type indicates the SAP format that is to be used to interpret the data of a business transaction.

An IDoc type consists of the following components:

· a control record

This is identical for each IDoc type.

· several data records

One data record consists of a fixed key part and a variable data part. The data part is interpreted using segments, which differ depending on the IDoc type selected.

· several status records

These are identical for each IDoc type and describe the statuses an IDoc has already passed through or the status an IDoc has attained.

Regards,

[former_member185881]

Hi vishal

IDOC is an Intermediate Document, all the necessary fields are already defined while creating IDOC ok.

Why we create DT just to define the source structure but in IDOC its already define thats why we dont create DT in case of IDOC.

If we are not creating DT thats means MT should also not be created because MT refers DT.

So In XI Idoc is treated as a Message Interface and we can directly use it, IDOC is created in R3 system.

Regards

Dheeraj Kumar

[Former Member]

Hi,

together with the IDoc metadata the IDoc is internally transferred to an IDoc XML message.

It's explained here more in detail:

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw04/helpdata/en/b9/c5b13bbeb0cb37e10000000a11402f/frameset.htm

Regards

Patrick

Edited by: Patrick Koehnen on Jul 10, 2009 12:42 PM