Diff between Exchange Infrastructure and rest of EAI tools

[Former Member]

hai,

please give me the clear idea about the differences between XI and other EAI tools and position of XI in that.

[former_member192798 · Accepted solution]

Hi Sridhar,

XI is a middleware like many others. It is well suited for connecting SAP systems with each other and with non-SAP. SAP XI provides an integrated workflow engine that allows to define adapters to non-XML-protocols and mappings to convert data content from source to target.

There are lots of advantages but to list a few :

• Easy Integration with SAP products & components (RFC, IDOC, Proxy).

• Data security as expected from any SAP product.

• Standards based - XML, XSD, Xpath etc

• Ability to communicate with other messaging systems/products.

• Business Process Management

• Synchronous & Asynchronous communication possible.

• Complex processes for communication possible instead of only sending and receiving (business process management) (connect e.g. asynchronous and synchronous steps, define complex communication scenarios)

• Mapping etc possible to accomplish in Java. Platform independent Java components.

• Java & .Net support.

• Big range of adapters for different technologies / tools (SOAP, Mail, JDBC, CDIX...)available in standard or offered by other companies (EDI e.g. by Seeburger).

• Process functionalities inside XI to modify content in the communication channel on own defined rules fpr business purposes.

• Central monitoring for data communication for all your communication between different systems.

• And the marketing issue: SAP and its partners provide high volume of development capabilities to make XI always up-to-date for new requirements.

Regards.

Praveen

[bhavesh_kantilal]

Sridhar,

a Few advantages of XI.

1. XI has inbulit content that can be used for integrating with SAP systems like SUS , CRM etc

2. When you need to integrate with an SAP system XI has an advantage in supporting various SAP components and so on.

3. Monitoring is another advantage with XI.

Regards,

Bhavesh

[Shabarish_Nair]

XI comes to be of great potential in case of the customer landscape having other SAP R3 / Netweaver systems.

A line from an document with the extract of teched -

"..... the message this week at SAP TechEd '05 is that SAP XI is inevitable. SAP XI will replace standard plug-ins used in R/3 versions of SAP as an integration method, according to SAP."

Also

Ref: for an interesting discussion