Integrating PI with Salesforce.com

[Former Member]

Hi all,

We run SAP PI 7.1 (no enhancement packs yet).

We are currently putting together a project proposal for intergrating Salesforce.com with our ECC6.0 backend system. The project team (externals) are advocating CAST IRON as the middleware platform. I want to propose that we use PI instead, and am curious as to the platform requirements needed to integrate PI and Salesforce.com.

I've researched and understand that there may be issues over session management in the integration (one of the reasons the project wants Cast Iron), but also see that people have integrated salesforce.com and Pi successfully. Is there anything special I need to know about this connectivity. I understand that communication is via SOAP, and salesforce.com have WSDL's availabile, but wondered if there was anything more complicated, or special adapters that would be needed to faciliate the connectivity. Any experiences you can share will be much appreciated.

Thanks

Stephen.

[anupam_ghosh2 · Accepted solution]

Hi Stephen,

You can refer to this article to know how this is done. The author used to praise highly about PI and from him I learnt working in PI.

http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/go/portal/prtroot/docs/library/uuid/50a76cfa-4966-2d10-aba7-da496d9b5...

regards

Anupam

[Former Member]

We are also being asked to integrate SAP and salesforce, and we already have PI installed.  Though we have PI, our project team is still asking us (the integration team) to evaluate other solutions including Cast Iron, Informatica.  I am having a hard time figuring out why.  I believe both PI and any of the other solutions can technically accomplish the integration (since each have successful installations).  I am starting to think this may be more about the programming requirements in salesforce (APEX) to perform the integration.  Some of the information I've dug up claims integration can be completed much faster using Cast Iron or Informatica compared to PI, due to bundled tools such as development kit, pre-defined integration templates, config-based methodology, etc.   Does anyone have any insight on this?

TIA!

Heraleen

[former_member217117]

Hi Heraleen,

I am also facing the same situation, did you manage to find a particular advantage of using PI instead of Cast IRON?

[S0003485845]

Dear Christian,

I jus twanted to let you know, that for a SalesForce-Integration, you would also be able to use the Seeburger B2B-Cloud Services where a possible scenario would be that SAP PI forwards the IDocs to the Cloud and the B2B-Cloud then executes the WebService calls to th SalesForce System.

In this way, you don´t have to use an additional software/middleware. Please let me know if you would like to have additional information how this integration would look like.

Kind Regards

Stefan

[Former Member]

We are still in evaluation.  Project will be starting in earnest shortly.  Up to now we've been building our SFDC system.   Next phase is the integration with SAP.

[former_member184506]

Hi Heraleen

Highly suggest you look at the Advantco SFDC adapter. This adapter has so many wrapped functionalities that made easy to use, and can make your learning curve significantly shorter regarding integration with SFDC, compared to the enterprise WSDL way.

[agasthuri_doss]

Stephen,

1) Backend is SAP ECC , So SAP PI is better option as integration tool in your case

2) Montoring is awesome in SAP PI when we compare to Cast Iron

3) SAP ECC & SAP PI are blended/integrates more when compare with SAP ECC & cast iron

4) >>but wondered if there was anything more complicated, or special adapters that would be needed to faciliate the connectivity

No

5) SOAP call will do

Cheers

Agasthuri

[Former Member]

Thanks both, so does that mean as far as you are both aware, that there is nothing to worry about with regard to session management on the salesforce side of things?

Really appreciate your answers.

[baskar_gopalakrishnan2]

>Thanks both, so does that mean as far as you are both aware, that there is nothing to worry about with regard to session management on the salesforce side of things?

Yes. Using Webservice (SOAP or HTTP adapter), PI can deal with session management on the salesforce side.

[baskar_gopalakrishnan2]

>I understand that communication is via SOAP, and salesforce.com have WSDL's availabile, but wondered if there was anything more complicated, or special adapters that would be needed to faciliate the connectivity

PI has SOAP adapter to support web service communication. You have to import WSDL in PI and develop Web service scenario to consume salesforce.com. It is pretty standard and simple. SOAP can be used for both sync and asynchronous mode. We dont need special adapters. Just using soap adapter in PI will solve this issue.

Hope that helps