I guess that would depend on the whether or not the XSLT transformations have already been defined and where your knowledge resides. For example, I don't have alot of XSLT knowledge but I do know Java and have used the graphical editor for easy transformations. So guess what, for me I'm using the graphical editor for now until I can learn XSLT.
It all depends on your Business Scenario, how complex is your XSLD Schema and what kind of Transformations u want to do. There are different options to choose which Transformations u want to use for ur scenario:
1. If the Graphical Mapping Tool can handle all the Transformations u want to use, then use the Graphical Mapping Tool.
2. If there are no standard functions available inside the Graphical Mapping Tool, Then u have to create ur own Java Function to do the Transformations.
3. If the Graphical Tool cannot handle all ur Transformations, then go with XSLT Mapping. XI has its own XSLT Processor. But u have to use ur own XSLT editor and test it before u import them into Integration Repository. U can even call ur own Java Programs inside the XSLT program.
4. If XSLT Mapping cannot handle ur Transformations, then go with Java Mappings.
So u have to decide at the Design Phase which mapping u want to use based upon the complexity of u r scenario.
Thanks for the Information Prasad. I have had similar opinion regarding transformations. But I have some doubts. Assuming we do transformations using Graphical Mapping Tool, XSLT (for scenarious Graphical Tool can't handle) and then Java Mappings. How it would affect the future trend. For example only XSLT part of Business Connector mappings can be migrated to XI and not all. Do you think the future XI versions will handle Graphical Mapping transformations. Is it GMT proprietary to SAP XI? Would it be advantageous to use open standards? Please clarify.
There are always new functionalities included in the GMT with the latest versions of XI. Yes GMT is proprietary to XI.
I can see there are advantages to use Open Standards by providing a XSLT Mapping Tool inside GMT, but there are so many vendors in the market who provide these tools for XSLT Mapping.
There is also another consideration for selecting mapping methods...the size of the message to be mapped.
XSLT requires the complete source XML document to be in memory, in addition to the resulting XML document. For large XML messages, this can be a resouce issue.
Thanks for giving lot differences between XSLT and Graphical. My question is
Is there any difference in performance using these two different things because I am working in MDM Businesspartner for Financial Services. Few days back, I came to know that it is must to use XSL files for transformation when message type is very big and complex. Can you put some light on this issue?
like William Li statet before there is a consideration about the size of XSLT-Mapping. In order to be able to do mapping all structure of the xml has to be in memory as a DOM-Structure. You can guest that this will consume huge memory. Another aspect is the working behavior of the XSLT-Processor. It go all the node in the tree to query just one information on the node.
With graphical Mapping especially with the node function you can do a lot and complex thing you can also do with XSLT. If there is no standard function available it is esay to write a smal java function an integrate it into the graphical mapping. The performance should be better if doing mapping with XSLT. If the performance is the only one reason than take graphical mapping befor XSLT. When standard and portability is important than XSLT will be the best but it will get lost in performance. I have not yet compare directly this two technic but principle XSLT is more slower because of huge memory used for both DOM structur (source and destination).
As i understand, we can enable point-to-point communication using XI Web services. But is the XI web service architecture itself tightly coupled with the WEB AS web service architecture?
If that be the case, what would be the advantage of using XI rather than WEB AS directly for web services?
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