XI Adapter vs SOAP Adapter (XI Protocol)

[justin_santhanam]

Good Evening,

Hope everyone is doing great! I have a question regarding the XI Adapter( dual stack) vs SOAP Adapter(XI Protocol). I'm looking for more technical level details(rather than xyz parameter is supported in XI adapter and not in SOAP Adapter (xi protocol)).

Let me make clear why I needed to know this. In the past when we debate whether to use RFC or Proxy , we always say

     use Proxy because of adapter less communication.

Does the above statement still holds good in Java Single stack? This is the reason I wanted to know the technical details of XI Protocol on SOAP Adapter.

Please let me know if my question make sense.

Thanks,

Justin.

[justin_santhanam · Accepted solution]

Now if may ask which adapter to choose RFC vs Proxy(SOAP Adapter) - what will be your answer and why?

Can I still answer, I 'll choose Proxy due to the native support of XI protocol in SOAP Adapter?

Justin.

[Shabarish_Nair · Accepted solution]

in my view, the answer is pretty simple really

1. If you already have a standard RFC or a custom RFC available to you, then use RFC adapter else use the Proxy

2. If the requirement deals with huge data loads, then use proxy.

[justin_santhanam · Accepted solution]

Shabz,

Thanks again - the native support is still there or is not anymore?

In addition to your point, I would think if we have to do multimapping n:n (for example if there are 10 records from the source and the RFC can process 1  at a time) we can do it in proxy. Because instead of creating 10 RFC connections, I would be better off with creating 1 connection to ECC and the proxy take care of the business. Again it depends on the business requirement and need to be analyzed case by case basis.

Agree?

Justin.

[Shabarish_Nair · Accepted solution]

the native support will be there whenever you use a dual stack. But going forward once you have a single stack i.e Java only architecture, you will only have the SOAP XI protocol.

Hope this help. Also I agree with what you have mentioned around RFC vs Proxy.

[justin_santhanam · Accepted solution]

Thank You...

[Shabarish_Nair]

Let me make clear why I needed to know this. In the past when we debate whether to use RFC or Proxy , we always say 
     use Proxy because of adapter less communication. 

I wouldnt say that is true It is not the adapter less communication that is the advantage but the capability of handling huge loads due to native protocol support. Technically there is still an 'adapter' (ABAP piece of code) that helps as a connector.

If you have the opportunity, use the XI protocol in SOAP adapter due to ;

1. better performance

2. aligning yourself towards the future roadmap of  single stack ESB

[justin_santhanam]

Thanks Shabz. Now it make sense. I didn't term it correctly ("adapter less communication"), but I understood the benefits now. Thanks again for taking time to answer, highly appreciated.

~Justin.

[Former Member]

Hi Justin,

           >> use Proxy because of adapter less communication

The above is being told because to save the effort on the developer's part as we don't need to explicitly configure adapters for proxy scenarios. Proxy also internally uses the adapter (like XI).  

Prior to PI 7.1, the ABAP proxies used to communicate with Integration Engine directly. In PI 7.1 AAE concept came (Java only stack) which can only support Java based scenarios not ABAP based scenarios(like Proxy).

In order to make Proxies to communicate with AAE, the SOAP adapter in PI 7.1 was enhanced. So, that it supports XI protocol to communicate with ABAP proxies.

The advantage in this case, is the significant improvement of performance. Please check the below link.

http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/go/portal/prtroot/docs/library/uuid/70066f78-7794-2c10-2e8c-cb967cef4...

Hope this helps.

Thanks & Regards,

Samir

[justin_santhanam]

Thanks Samir. I have gone through this document  already.  Appreciate your time.