Idocs or enterprise services?

Hello all,
We are starting a SAP PI implementation for a new SAP ECC 6.0 system. The implementation is from scratch, so we don't have to consider any historical issues or decisions. One of the first business processes to be integrated with business partners is the Procure-to-Pay process. The old way of implementing this B2B scenario was with idocs (e.g. ORDERS05 and INVOIC03), but nowadays the enterprise service bundles also contain services for this scenario. Should I choose idocs or enterprise services as a technique to get the information send to SAP PI or send the information to SAP ECC? What are the advantages and disadvantages of both techniques? Does anyone have experience with the implementation of the enterprise services for Procure-to-Pay?
Thanks for your response!
Kind Regards,
Mark

This should be more of strategical decision rather than a technical decision. If your entire organization actually desires to adopt the SOA backbone, then it should start with servicizing the scenarios and in that case, it would be good to choose the Enterprise Bundles.
However, if there is no such plan in near future, and all your existing business processes follows the earlier techniques only, then it would be better to go for idocs to have a standard configuration throughout the landscape.
Technically, it would be easire for you to implement Idoc related scenario as per the availability of resources and SAP support availabale. SOA implementation being relatively new in market, would be a bit difficult to implement however, managing it in future would anytime be better than any other technical implementations like with Idocs.
Regards,
Prateek

Similar Messages

  • Integration scenarios from scratch: idocs or enterprise service

    Hello,
    We are starting a SAP PI implementation for a new SAP ECC 6.0 system. The implementation is from scratch, so we don't have to consider any historical issues or decisions. One of the first business processes to be integrated with business partners is the Procure-to-Pay process. The old way of implementing this B2B scenario was with idocs (e.g. ORDERS05 and INVOIC03), but nowadays the enterprise service bundles also contain services for this scenario. Should I choose idocs or enterprise services as a technique to get the information send to SAP PI or send the information to SAP ECC? What are the advantages and disadvantages of both techniques? Does anyone have experience with the implementation of the enterprise services for Procure-to-Pay?
    Thanks for your response!
    Kind Regards,
    Mark

    Hello,
    We are starting a SAP PI implementation for a new SAP ECC 6.0 system. The implementation is from scratch, so we don't have to consider any historical issues or decisions. One of the first business processes to be integrated with business partners is the Procure-to-Pay process. The old way of implementing this B2B scenario was with idocs (e.g. ORDERS05 and INVOIC03), but nowadays the enterprise service bundles also contain services for this scenario. Should I choose idocs or enterprise services as a technique to get the information send to SAP PI or send the information to SAP ECC? What are the advantages and disadvantages of both techniques? Does anyone have experience with the implementation of the enterprise services for Procure-to-Pay?
    Thanks for your response!
    Kind Regards,
    Mark

  • Integration scenarios from scratch -- idocs or enterprise service bundles

    Hello,
    We are starting a SAP PI implementation for a new SAP ECC 6.0 system. The implementation is from scratch, so we don't have to consider any historical issues or decisions. One of the first business processes to be integrated with business partners is the Procure-to-Pay process. The old way of implementing this B2B scenario was with idocs (e.g. ORDERS05 and INVOIC03), but nowadays the enterprise service bundles also contain services for this scenario. Should I choose idocs or enterprise services as a technique to get the information send to SAP PI or send the information to SAP ECC? What are the advantages and disadvantages of both techniques? Does anyone have experience with the implementation of the enterprise services for Procure-to-Pay?
    Thanks for your response!
    Kind Regards,
    Mark

    Hi Mark,
    here are my 2 cents to your very interesting disussion.
    The IDOC was designed to customize EDI data distributions between SAP Systems via messagetypes and transaktioncodes (Vorgangscodes) in the partnerdetermination which itself is mapped (the "Vorgangscode") to functional modules to do "something". The complete customizing of IDOC distribution might sometimes seems to be complex (and we both know it is more than that but it is FULL CUSTOMIZABLE from a consulting point of view.
    The Enterprise Service (my personal view multiplied with the last TechEds and RampUp Delta courses) have another focus. An Enterprise Service is (mostly) some entity which is consumable from the outside world such that they are implemented with Request-Response patterns. When you only want to distribute information why will one use something like Request Response Patterns? One could argue to get back any response, any confirmation or something else....but this is also possible with IDOCs and their acks.
    Another argument against to use an ES for P2P outbound scenario is, if yet not seen any ES which is triggert while create a purchase order in its related transaction. Is the BADI for such Transaction triggering the ES while the save event has been processed? If you could find out this fact and if the BADI (or some new kind of user exit for transactions) is implemented and fully supported from SAP I would choose the ES in the P2P processs. Otherwise why using the ES instead of the IDOC when using a PI as Middleware which is converting the source message type (ES or IDOC) into its proparitary legacy system format. Please let me know when you found such userexit/BADI for ES.
    Please don't missunderstand my point of view, I would really throw away these IDOCS and using a couple of ES instead but what is the fully supported STANDARD from a customizable and manageable point of view. When you are familiar with proxy technology you know how easy to implement, monitor and manageble theses technology is - BUT - you always have to code some (maybe not release independent) proxy method and you maybe have to invest some knowledge for error handling, rollbacks or additional commit works - all of these stuff will be handled (mostly ) by the SAP standard delivered functions.
    Last but not least - if there is any standard out there to trigger an ES from a transaction without coding I would rather use the ES instead of the IDOC. If there is no such standard I would discuss the functionality with the customer (if to complex implement an inbound or outbound proxy=ES) or extend the IDOC or use a BAPI (and extend the BAPI if needed) - mostly the proxy will the be the easiest choice if the needed field count is not to much (<30).
    So long, let me know about your findings and your decision.
    Regards,
    Dries

  • IDocs or Enterprise Services in message exchange between systems

    I am trying to get some qualitative and quantitative answers to the comparison of Enterprise Services or IDocs as a choice of interface technology when exchanging messages via PI with external systems.
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    I have seen one other posting in this forum related to this, but no definitive answer.
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    Does anybody have an opinion as to the suitability of Enterprise Services for such a task? Is the technology stable enough to be trusted yet?
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    All answers very much appreciated!
    Kind Regards,
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    Hi Michal,
    Thanks for the reply. I try to respond to your questions precisely:
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    so you compare two different things
    Yes, I know. What if the message scenario was asynchronous, and you chose not to handle the response message of the Enterprise Service? You could still do that, right? Then the problem becomes how do you trace the status of the Enterprise Service transaction.
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    The whole reason for me asking about the use of Enterprise Services is that there are so many now that could be used for message exchange, if they were suitable for the task.
    Also, what about creating Asynchronous/Synchronous bridges in PI to handle the response message? Then the response is always traceable, correct? Even if the customer doesn't want the response message, the content could always be found in the PI message monitor.
    Additionally, there is a transaction in ERP that wraps a BAPI into an IDoc (don't have a system in front of me at the moment and cannot recall the transaction, maybe OM69 or something similar). Now, that is taking a synchronous 'service' (the BAPI), and converting it into an asynchronous IDoc. So if this is such a bad idea, why do SAP provide the transaction? Therefore, by extension, wouldn't it be possible to do the same thing for Enterprise Services, at least from a philosophical point of view? I mean, why would SAP imply you could do this for one kind of synchronous service (the BAPIs) but not others (the Enterprise Services)?
    if you're talking about migrations etc I don't believe services
    will be used with LSMW but BAPIs are on the other hand
    No, I was talking about high volume message scenarios, sorry for the ambiguity. I guess if the performance of Enterprise Services is comparible to that of well written BAPIs, the answer is 'yes', correct?
    Kind Regards,
    Tony.

  • Enterprise Services and Persistence

    Hi All,
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    I would like to know if SAP asynchronous Enterprise Services can/do provide persistence as well. Knowing this would help us decide between using IDocs or Enterprise Services in future developments.
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    Cheers
    Gerard

    Dear Gerard
    SAP's asynchronous Enterprise Services uses proxy technology which provides persistence in the local integration engine. It is similar to IDocs, whereby the message data is persisted prior to processing by the application logic.
    Additionally, SAP-delivered Enterprise Services uses Forward Error Handling (FEH) framework to enable error handling capabilities like editing and resending. Together with Error Conflict Handler (ECH) and Post-Processing Office (PPO), this enables capabilities similar to IDoc error handling.
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    I've also blogged about development of custom asynchronous proxies utilizing FEH/ECH/PPO. You can check the blog below for an example of how persistence in the integration engine is, as well as the editing and reprocessing features.
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    - What if you at some stage need to orchestrate provisioning interfaces to cater for changing business / market / regulatory conditions?
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    - What about skill levels (developers etc.) for IDOCs & Enterprise services?
    - Budget constraints?
    These are just some questions...
    On the whole, I think that Enterprise Services would work better but it depends on your specific circumstances & SAP is investing significantly more on Enterprise Servies than IDOCs so you would get that added benefit.
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