Seeburger AS2 Adapter

[Former Member]

Hi,

I need few information how to implement seeburger adapter(Using AS2 or FTP) with XI. I have a requirement to convert the EDI Ansi X12 messages from a EDI system and post it into a R/3 system using XI.

The client system(EDI system) is in US has VAN and we have the R/3 in India. So do we need to establish a VAN connectivity or it can directly access the client VAN to take the EDI messages.

Do clarify whether to go for AS2 or FTP, and what are the advantages of each.

I went thro few documents from Seeburger which comes up with the package of Generic FTP adapters or we have a Standalone AS/2, or BIS:HUB and spoke.

Regards,

Nithiyanandam

[Former Member]

HI,

Brief about the FTP/VAN adapter:

The SEEBURGER FTP/VAN Adapter is responsible for transmitting files according to the File Transfer Protocol, with the particular support of various VANs. This protocol was installed as a user gateway protocol by several of the largest VAN providers, such as IBM, GE and Sterling IIB and Sterling Commerce.

The FTP/VAN adapter must be configured in the configuration part of the Integration Builder. The adapter is based on the Adapter Framework and is executed by the SAP J2EE Adapter Engine as shown in the diagram below.

The FTP/VAN Adapter supports the following protocols:

• IBMIE VAN, all report options.

• GEIS (GeMarkIII) and GeMark3000, all report options, report file is only extracted, if needed.

• EXITE (ECODEX), EDIFACT file processing, DISPATCHED reports.

• Sterling Commerce and Sterling IIB.

• MCI EDI*Net.

The following FTP options are supported:

• SSL, both IMPLICIT and AUTH_TLS support, server authentication.

• All popular FTP proxy types like: USERWL, USERWOL, SITEWL, OPENWOL.

• Active and Passive connection modes.

• "KeepAlive" feature.

• Binary, ASCII and custom transfer types.

Refer the below thresd which taks about the AS2 adapter configuration inroder to convert the EDI to XML message the similar configuration needs to be done in case of VAN/FTP adapter.

Seeburger adapters like FTP,OFTPS,AS2,X400 are used for B2B scenario where the file is coming through WAn network or mailbox. As XI dont have capability to convert the EDIFACT format file to XML the same work will be done by seeburger adapters.

The SEEBURGER Business Integration Converter (BIC) is an any-to-any format converter, used to translate EDI data and legacy data formats into XML and vice versa. It can also be used for complex, high performance XML-to-XML mappings or to interface to existing JDBC data sources.

Supported EDI formats include:

• ANSI

• EDIFACT

• INHOUSE

• IDOC

• XML Schema

• XML DTD

• CSV

• Delimited Data

• positional data

• SWIFT

• EANCOM

and many more.

See for converting the EDI XML to EDI and XML-EDI you need to have a seeburger mapping program at the adapter module which does the conversion. For this module you need a BIC tool of seeburger which provides the different module program for EDI to XML and XML-EDI. This program needs to be deployed on XI and through adapter it has to be called for conversion.

Seeburger provides the std mapping program which has to be deploy on to XI and we need to give it to module tab in adapter which does the conversion.

Here are the some of the std mapping program which is provided by seeburger.

See_E2X_INVOIC_UN_D96A

See_E2X_INVOIC_UN_D99A

See_E2X_ORDERS_UN_D96A

See_E2X_OSTRPT_EAN_D96A.

We need to take the license from seeburger and we need to deploye the seeburger adapters then only we can see in adapter list on XI.

Thanks and Regards,

Chirag Gohil

[Former Member]

Hi,

But i found a document from seeburger stating that EDI-INT AS2 elimates VAN. I not very clear about the seeburger package. As we try to implement seeburger, do need to quote for any special package of Seeburger adapter or in general seeburger adapter comes with the BIC mapper tool which can be imported in XI and used for conversion from EDI to XML or XML to EDI.

Also let me know what is the difference between Seeburger FTP and Seeburger AS/2. Does both require VAN or only FTP requires VAN.

Regards,

Nithiyanandam

[Former Member]

Hi,

I told you about the FTP/VAN adapter now here is a brief overview about AS2 adapter then you can understand what is the difference between both of them.

The EDIINT protocol enables the secure exchange of EDI data over the public Internet. It secures the transmission of arbitrary (but usually EDI) files. EDIINT AS2 uses HTTP (i.e. the WWW protocol) as its transport protocol.

The EDIINT AS2 Adapter implements the following protocols:

• AS2 over HTTP

• AS2 over HTTP/s

The following EDIINT AS2 options are supported:

• Message encryption

• Message / MDN signing

• Compression

• Synchronous / asynchronous communication

The following Qualities of Services are supported:

Outbound (AS2 sends a message to an external partner)

• Best Effort

• Exactly Once

• Exactly Once in Order

Inbound (AS2 adapter receives a message from external partner)

• Exactly Once

Just read my response about the BIC, you get the clear idea.

Do let me know if you need any further information.

Thanks and Regards,

Chirag Gohil