BDC vs XI :Recommendations required

[Former Member]

Hi All,

We have the following task. I am providing 2 solution approach for the task. Do let me know which one is is the best and Efficient and your recommendations.

<b>Systems involved :</b> SAP ; 3rd party file based systems. (Applciations that accept data only in the form of <b>flat files</b> (custom structures)).

<b>Process flow :</b> Required data from ECC system (FI/ SD/ HR) system should be sent across to 3rd party applications in the form of flat files.

<b>No. of interfaces :</b> (100-120) HR->50; FI-CO->30; SD->10 ; Others->10-15

<b>Frequency :</b> Some of them are daily, some are monthly, and some annually.

Examples of some of the Interfces where data flows out are:

FI --> EFT, POSPAY, Dim/Ledger [FC] (US), Dim/Ledger [FC] (International)

HR --> Benifits data, PA, etc...

<b>Solution Approachs:</b>

<b>1)</b> Write a BDC program to extract the data, converet into flat File and FTP it.

<b>2)</b> Write a ABAP Progam to populate IDoc (if standard IDOc is available) or generate a Outbound proxy (If standard IDoc is not available) to push the data into SAP XI. Write the tranformation logic in SAP XI and then use XI file adapter to sent ot the target system

<b>Efforts:</b> For solution approach1, If effort estimate is 1 unit. then for Solution approach2 the errort estimates would be atleast 1.6units. (1.6 times the approach1).

Which solution do you recommend. It would be of great help if you can tell me the pros & cons of each.

I know that XI is efficient in terms of "BPM, monitoring, error handling, alerts, CCMS, ........". Do let me know if you have any other recommendations apart from these...

Regards,

Siva Maranani

Helpful answers will definately be rewarded.

[moorthy · Accepted solution]

Hi,

If we go with XI then- As you know, XI can act as a Centralized integration platform, in future it will be very easy rather writing a BDC program

-capability of Webenablement will help you

-Integration Business Workflow (as you mentioned BPM)

-Features in XI are getting better

But initial investment, if you don't have XI environment will be high. And skill set required with their high demand will be high.

But if you go with BDC program, it will be a point to point right. And now and in future probably if ESA architecture is the part of the business , then I think this approach may not be valid. Regd, cost/effort/skill set it will be good option as of now.

This is just my views.

Regards,

moorthy

[Former Member]

Siva,

Good to see you back after long time.

In SAP, BDC programs are used to copy the screen sequences of a transaction and populate the data, instead of writing all kind of validations.

Instead of writing a BDC (extract) program to write a file, create the proxy for each one of these interfaces. I agree that it is little more work than the regular interface but when there is a middleware being used, why not make use of it.

I ran into one of the clients who were dumping the files on to the unix server, and XI picks them and writes to another server or JDBC.

About IDocs, I would not opt for these unless you need error handling of each record in case of failures. Even if it is SAP delivered IDoc, I rather prefer to write ABAP code to generate the same data, unless special requirements like Sales Data to the plants etc.

Regards

Shravan

[Former Member]

Hi,

If XI is already in landscape, then it makes every sense to make the message go through XI for the following Major additional (apart from what you have stated) advantage:

Loosely coupled soultion - So future addition / Changes become very easy - Maintenance cost in terms of monitoring and Changes would be very less as compared to the additional intial investmentment made to make the message go through XI. So even the intial cost is not a Con!

As rgds performance, although there is an additional overhead in terms of message requiring to pass through XI, server capabilities to process the messages very fast would make it hardly noticiable / applicable.

Rgds

R Chandrasekhar