Optimize your SAP PI/CPI development

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Your SAP Integration development is not all about delivering interfaces fast. It is also about making sure that you do the proper Change Management for the interfaces. In all organizations, integration is playing a key role in the future of the organization. If you have SAP PI/PO or Cloud Platform Integration (CPI), then you probably have quite a number of projects to look at. It is difficult to get time to architecture, development, and QA because there are too many projects going on.

My presentation is built on a process like the following steps. And it is the same if you are using agile or waterfall. Sure there may be a difference in the step size, duration, and naming. But they will always be there. It is the following

  • Scoping
  • Development
  • Testing
  • Document
  • Transport
  • Validation
  • Go live
  • Support

 

The Figaf IRT tool allows optimize and automize the different steps in the process, so you don’t have to have all the manual paper tasks to fill in. You will get a much greater visibility in to what is developed of your SAP PI/CPI landscape. And then you are going to get just one landscape for handling all your developments since IRT support both PI/CPI in one common landscape.

In the webinar, I also get to show off the new data anonymization process that allows you to anonymize data, so you can do a good test with your HR data anyway.

You can watch the replay here. We did have some technical issues and the video did not turn out correct. So I had to create a new version of the video. I guess it is better because of the rehearsal.

You can start using Figaf IRT for free. We have a free package that allows you to test forever.

Yes I want to test SAP PI/CPI

 

Anonymize your SAP PI Test data

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With GDPR it is increasingly important to be able to mask or anonymize your test data. If I’m a customer at your company it would probably not be a good idea that you are testing with my order. But if you can anonymize it so nobody will know that I ordered it, you can do all the testing that you want. Normally it is something that takes a lot of time to do and then you don’t do it. We want to make testing easy so you will use it.

We can see at customers that it is a problem, and have now created a feature to you in 10 minutes can anonymize your data for test cases. Check the video below where I’ll create a new test data from my SAP PI system, convert it and then have my options.

After this conversion, you can run the data on all your systems when you have upgraded or someone is updating the mappings used.

We will add some more functionality to it. Like, have a names like first, lastnames, streetnames. It will be a list that you can edit and add names that makes sense in your organisation.

Also, I’m considering how to handle Service Interfaces with marked as sensitive data. I ‘m considering to set a flag that you cannot test with the data. And need to create an anonomized test case for it. And there could probably also be some user role that can view the un-anonymized data, and use the studio.

The flow of developing the test case could also be improved, but I guess we will take it with some real sceanrios.

You can start using Figaf IRT for free. There is a free package where you can get access to use it to test SAP PI/CPI test cases.

Yes I want to test SAP PI/CPI

 

Generate Test data for your Groovy scripts in CPI

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I wanted to develop some Groovy scripts but it is a little cumbersome to do it in CPI because you need to deploy, activate the script and the look at the trace. This takes quite a bit of time. I found Eng Swee Yeoh blog (How) do you test your Groovy Scripts. Here he shows how you can create a script to run your Groovy Scripts as on CPI, so you can do it in Eclipse or IntelliJ.

I just hate the manual job about setting up the correct content for a test case. So because we had the content needed in Figaf IRT we could automate the process.

We have added an implementation of the SAP CPI Camel Message class so users could create it. We have included it into the script, so you only need the public Camel Core. The implementation may not be fully complete but it is a lot faster than downloading all the required jar files as is described in Yeoh’s blog .

To view a demo of how this works check the following video

 

Download the libraries required:

  • Camel  and download the latest release of Camel to get the Apache Core, this contains the Camel Attachment
  • CPI APIs download the Generic API and the Scripting API.
  • Groovy JSON parser

If you use Eclipse you can create a Groovy Project, then add the above jars.  Then add the current groovy script and the generated to the project. You will need to change the location of the CPI grovy script so it matches. Once you save the payload in an Expression use the command ${bodyAs(String)}, then you will get access to the payload.

 

If you have ideas for improvement please share. 

Known limitations: For some headers/properties that are saved in org.apache.camel.converter.stream.InputStreamCache IRT cannot access the payload. You need to convert the payload to String before adding it as an attribute if it is binary.

Download the IRT application and try it out with your system. It is free for 10 Interfaces.

Download IRT now

The future of SAP Integration PI, CPI and how to prepare your self

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So yesterday, Tuesday, November 13. 2018, I just hosted a webinar about the key takeaways from SAP Teched and how to implement things based on it. It thinks it was one of my own webinars with most viewers (40). So it is an important topic. I think I missed the Gartner quote that 50% of the development budget will be about integration or something in that line.

When we were starting to see some cloud applications I did not see so many integrations. Lately, I have seen quite a number of a project involving some cloud application. I had seen that SAP would be able to provide some of the content as pre-delivered, but there are going to be so much more than you will need to develop. I just got an email from an SAP customer that they got a tsunami of cloud integration, so it is other areas as well.

Understand where you are going

On the webinar, I do cover how you can understand your own integrations and try to plan what integration you should be doing. I recommend that you take a look at the Integration Solution Advisor – Methodology. It has been updated and I have talked with quite a few architects using it and it gave them a good understanding of what they should be doing.

Roadmap

Then I cover the current state of the SAP PI roadmap, which will affect your existing integration. I do see the CPI on your SAP PI system as a good option to run some of your content. You probably want to start a migration if you are on a dual stack system, I have some resources on how you can do an SAP PI migration project. If you have Seeburger and want to migrate to B2B Add-on I created a webinar on how you can automate the migration. I also recorded a podcast on how a customer did a migration of Seeburger to B2B Add-on.

After you have been going thru your ISA-M you will have some integration patterns that you need new tools for. I’m covering SAP Cloud offerings for integration and their full iPaaS product. I think it would be wise to use the SAP tools first to see if they suit your needs and if not then you can find a better vendor for the solution. SAP will be adding new functions to the Cloud Offering to address the customers needs.

Operations

There is a need to make more integration at a faster pace. And you are probably not able to get more people on your team. So it is about making them as effective as possible. At Figaf we have created solutions to enable the development process to be a little easier from development, documentation, testing and supporting. You can check our tool Figaf IRT that can support the full lifecycle. I think it will help you improve your development of new features, so you will be more flexible and develop things faster.

Next week I’m hosting a webinar where I’ll cover how you can use the Figaf IRT tool to optimize your SAP PI and CPI development process.

Signup for webinar on Speeding up integration

 

View the presentation

You can watch the full video here.

 

 

Integration at #Impuls18 and IFG for Integration, you missed out

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I’m on my way home from IFG for Integration/Impuls18 in Stockholm. IFG is the international focus group for Integration and consists of users in a lot of the European countries, I’m member. I think it was one of the more exciting conferences regarding SAP Integration that I have been to in a long time.

So SAPSA the Swedish SAP user group wanted to host us for the event and gave two rooms that we could use for presentations. So for most of the 2 days, there were two parallel sessions on SAP Integration. Most of the time it was stuff that people was implementing.

One big topic was about the Integration architecture, from design concept and implementation.

We did get some roadmap presentations of the SAP PI/PO and cloud integration products from SAP. Users and consultants were also contributing to what they have been doing for integration.
One of the big areas that are challenging at the moment is the hybrid integration that everybody is going thru to understand what to take away. In XI 3.0 days we had one tool that could solve all the challenges at that point in time.
How it is a lot different you have the option to use PI and then new iPaaS solution from SAP Cloud Integration Suite. One of the presentations cited Gartner, that the hybrid platform was that it is a toolbox and you should use the ones that make the most sense.

It does make a lot of sense to understand the architecture part beccause otherwise you will be focusing on the wrong thing, and probably ending up with something less optimal.
On a big QA session, we got talking around how rogue IT is causing challenges in the landscape. I created a video on it here

I did share a presentation on Open Connectors, which i believe is a pretty cool tool for integration. It takes a lot of effort away for doing integration and understanding what is going on in the landscape. I hope to get some time to record a video of it, because I don’t think my slides makes a lot of sense.

The other presentation was about how you can speed up your integration development on SAP PI/PO or CPI with the Figaf IRT tool. I got some good feedback on it after the presentation and interest.

I did make the mistake of going into the wrong room for a presentation and was stuck on one of the first rows in the middle. So I missed one of the Integration keynotes.

The only problem with the event was the vine at the party was 100 SEK (10 EUR), and it did not even taste good.

I do think that I need to update my guidelines for the SAP Integration webinar that I’m doing next week. You can signup for free to learn how you can implement a better integration .