Hi, my name is Denys van Kempen, SAP HANA Academy.
You are watching a video tutorial that is part of a series about the SAP Business Technology
Platform, SAP Integration Suite certification, covering Integration Advisor.
This video was recorded in March 2022.
For the latest tutorials on the topic, please check the playlist.
In the previous video, we covered provisioning and did a quick tour.
The integration advisor can be best understood as an add-on tool for the Cloud Integration
capability of the Integration Suite, the foundation, although the output, the artifacts, of the
tool can also be exported to the Process Integration tool (NetWeaver) for on-premises.
Integration Advisor can be used, as mentioned, to implement or develop interfaces and mappings.
The tool leverages machine learning to accomplish this.
In a nutshell, there are multiple industry standards.
here referenced as type systems, Accredited Standards Committee X12, an Electronic
Data Interchange (EDI) standard, couple of automotive codelists,
cXML for online commerce, used by Ariba for example,
ISO - the international standardization organization, OData and SOAP for SAP S/4HANA Cloud,
we have already seen this with API Management IDocs and SOAP for S/4HANA on premises
United Nations CEFACT and EDI FACT, electronic data interchange for administration, commerce,
and transport and when we select a standard
we can see that there are multiple versions different messages
complex types, simple types
and codelist its complicated
and the problem is that you might get the data,
the message, in one format,
but you need it in another this requires mapping, and this takes time,
a lot of time, and what the integration advisor does, is to check its repository, which is
constantly being fed with the latest data, to look for similar or comparable mappings
done elsewhere, previously Let’s take for example
S/4HANA Cloud OData message
purchase order in this case, only the latest version is available
and this we can use, as input,
to create a MIG, a message implementation guideline
we enter the dialog at step 4, sample XML as we have already selected the type system,
messsage, and version although the red star appears to indicate
that a sample XML file is required, this is optional
you can find this documented in the Cloud Integration guide
but we also have a Skip button what is required is a name
and direction: in, out, or both indicating whether this MIG describes a message
you receive, incoming or whether this MIG describes a message you
are going to send, outgoing version,
status, namespace,
message type, type system
and version are provided we can add some information about the MIG
as summary and we also need to add our own business context
the business process involved, the product and industry classification, country/region,
and business process role same for the partner business context
this comes from an extensive pre-populated list
same for industry, etc
Here we have some sample input, this data will be used by the Integration
Advisor to make recommendations for the MAG, the mapping guideline, coming up next
create and here we have the MIG
Overview tab with the business context
Structure, showing all the nodes, with constraints, if any, cardinality, type, length, codelist,
status select the nodes to add
and select Get proposal to activate the integration advisor, the machine
learning algorithms which returns a confidence score
in the trial environment, this is based on 3 MIGs, not a lot,
for production, we can expect the count to be higher,
and based on this, you can decide which nodes to include
the better the MIG is defined, the more accurate the MAG will be
for this purpose, we can enhance the MIG with additional information
for example, add a codelist
to the language column and include the relevant languages
Back to the MIG view we always need a source and a target
to create a MIG, we can start the dialog here add the type system
the message and version
skip the sample, but again, the more infomation you provide the more accurate the recommendation
would be give it a name
and add the business context in this case, the context will be the reverse
Get proposals on the nodes to include Apart from the type system codelist
we can also add our own custom codelists add the code values
and then in the structure select the corresponding node
select the codelist add the node to be qualified
and then, from the context menu create a qualified node
you do not need to memorize all of this, but this example illustrates some of the possibilities
we have when creating the message implementation guideline
back to the list to recap, we have created a MIG for an order
request coming in, in SOAP format and a purchase order going out, as OData
using the shortcut menu, we can edit, copy, or delete the MIG,
migrate to a more recent version of the source message,
view a history of changes, and compare the MIG with the original version
Now that we have a source and target MIG, we can create a mapping
select the source select the target
the overview tab lists both we can add some documentation
the challenge is to create the mapping depending on the terminology used and business
knowledge of the objects, this can be complicated and tedious
Fortunately, and this of course is the unique selling point of the advisor,
we can request a mapping proposal using machine learning
in production environments this might take a while
a here below, in the mapping list area, we see source and target mapped with a confidence
level from the same Proposal menu, we can opt for
Select Best Proposal the result is a visualisation
we can still make adjustments select a line,
delete line and make a new mapping
each mapping has a status, properties
some have a function attached we can add global parameters to a mapping,
shared code and should we have some sample data or some
real-life payload data, we can run a simulate to validate the mapping
We can inject the mapping directly as an Integration Flow for the SAP Cloud Integration capability,
which we will cover in another tutorial or export the flow
as runtime artifact, again for Cloud Integration or for Process
Integration (PI) on-premises with documentation in PDF, RTF, or Excel format.
Let’s export the MAG as Cloud Integration artifact
It is ZIP file with a mapping document in XSL format, style
sheets for XML and two folders with the source and target
mappings we can open this in an editor for some formatting
well over a 1,000 lines and in the MIG folder, there is an XSL for
post-processing for pre-processing
an XSD file, an XML schema description file plus two XML files with test data
the same for the target mapping That’s it for Integration Advisor, what
you need to know As you probably might have guessed, there
is a bit more to it, it is fairly specialised activity,
but this is not in the scope for the exam You can find the links to the resources mentioned
in the description of this video below.
This video tutorial was recorded by Denys van Kempen, SAP HANA Academy.
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