Development guideline regarding integration scenarios and BPM

[Former Member]

Hello Colleagues,

I have a general question regarding integration scenarios and BPN development.

For stateless scenarios I have to develop Integration Scenarios on AEX without BPN.

For stateful scenarios I have to develop Integration Processes with BPN.

Please correct me if my choice of words or assumption are wrong here!

I am correct in the assumption that I have to develop Integration Scenarios at NetWeaver Developer Studio (NWDS) with the Integration Flows Tool and Integraion Processes with the Composite Designer?

Or it's recommended and possible to "document" your Integration Scenario development as well in the Composite Designer?

My thinking here is to have a single point of view over all your developed scenarios (stateless or stateful).

In the meaning, you have to use only the Composite Designer if you using SAP Process Orchestration!?

Many thanks in advance!

Regards,

Jochen

[Jocelyn_Dart · Accepted solution]

Hi Jochen,

Ok well firstly I take it you mean BPM i.e. SAP NetWeaver Business Process Management - and not BPN... recommend you be a little careful to use the correct acronym as the wrong terminology can waste you lots of time when you are trying to find out more information. Especially as often one letter difference can be a completely different solution (like BPO).

Secondly to answer your question, the distinction isn't really stateful or stateless, it's more about the complexity of what you are trying to achieve.  You can have integration scenarios that don't require integration processes - but the more complex your scenario the more likely you will need or want to use a process alongside your integration scenario.

Yes you build integration scenarios with the NWDS Integration Flow (IFlow) Designer. You might want to take a look at William Li's blog for an introduction using a simple integration scenario that doesn't require a process.

http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-27342

William has a second blog on SAP NetWeaver BPM compared to ccBPM - if you've used PI before, anywhere you would previously have used ccBPM for integration processes, you now use SAP NetWeaver BPM with the AEX environment. This article includes a simple example of a BPM process.

http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-28803

For integration processes in the AEX environment you use SAP NetWeaver BPM.  The NWDS perspectives to use for development include:

• Process Modeling - draft the process
• Process Composer - build and deploy the process
• Composite Designer - overview of the developments

You don't have to use Composite Designer or Process Modeling - you can the whole process with Process Composer if you wish.  Composite Designer does add a nice overview that makes the process almost self-documenting - but it's a view that you can access any time - regardless of whether you used the Composite Designer when you were creating the process or not.

Usually the relationship between the IFlow and the BPM process are the events (i.e. messages that start or resume the process) and the automated steps (process steps that call messages).  The BPM process itself is deployed as a web service, and there are specific and easy integration options (the XI proxy) for managing the PI/BPM touchpoints.

Hope that helps.

Regards,

Jocelyn

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Jocelyn again!

In a second many thanks to you for this great clarification.

This is very helpfully to understand the differences and the complexity behind.

This will be very helpfully to me for my next steps!

Many thanks!

Regards,

Jochen