Execute standard activities from custom activity hook

[martin_schindler2]

Hi experts,

I need to get the printing input XML containing all the information about a SFC to do a custom process with it, but without doing the actual printing.

Since I' am pretty new to ME and is seems a bit complicated to rebuild the logic of collecting the printing information, I had the idea of executing the the ADS printing activity with a modified transport plugin to get the generated xml back from my custom hook.

It this generally possible or would this rather be a bad idea?

If it is a bad idea, what better option would you suggest?

Regards Martin

[sergiy_katerinich · Accepted solution]

Hi Martin,

meData.xml file which content is populated to the resulting output file (e.g. PDF) is saved to Temporary Priniting Directory (defined by System Rule Maintenance) if "Debugging" option of Logging Configuration in SAP ME Admin Utils is turned on. The file is a result of execution of Data Aquisition and Formatting plugins specified for the document. So, if you use some dummy plug-in for Transport plugin, it is likely you obtain what you need.

Regards,

Sergiy

[martin_schindler2]

Hi,

sorry I forgot to mention that this is related to ME 6.0.

@Sergiy:

actually this is an idea which meanwhile also came up to my mind.

The problem I see with this in the moment would be that probably also a dummy document would be needed to configured which is always collecting the complete information (all printing data option) for the SFC and I fear that this will take a lot of time during execution.

Or is there a possibility the set different formatting plugin to a documents printing options during rutime? Then it should be possible that only the information is collected which is really relevant for this document?

[sergiy_katerinich]

Hi Martin,

Yes, you need to create a document with all options turned on.

I strongly believe that there is no reason for you to fear:

- with a proper configuration of Archiving, the volume of production data can be kept at the level optimal for reasonably sufficient performance;

- if such configuration does not show that reasonable performance, then it is the matter for investigation and fixing like a bug;

- provided my experience, SAP ME part of printing does not seem to suffer from bad performance - it is around 1 second per document that has not raised complaints of any customer for a number of years;

- and this feature can be easily tested on-site to check the actual performance so that you do not need to guess.

So, my expectation is that you will not face insuperable performance issue.

Regards,

Sergiy

[Former Member]

Hi,

If the question is relevant for 6.1 then you can also consider having a "POST" extension to PrintingDataAcquisitionService and inject your content into xml.

Thanks,
Bakhtiyar