PI 7 to SAP Business Connector Connectivity

Question

Dear Gurus,
I have to connect our ECC 6.0 System to another ECC 6.0 System using B2B scenario. For B2B purposes we are using PI 7 while the other party is using SAP Business Connector (SAP BC) as it's front-end-tool for ERP-to-ERP connectivity. I am a Basis Consultant and I have been given the task of doing this connectivity. I have never worked on any business connector. Can anyone guide me in this? We do not have any PI Consultant
Also advice what infrastructure will be needed to complete this connectivity
Request you all gurus to kindly advise asap
Best Regards

Answer 1

Well, a PI consultant would be a better choice as you will have to learn some basics before you can implement your project. PI is not an easy system as business connector and it requires deeper skills and expertise on the tool, but with some effort, certainly you can do it yourself.
I do not have any experience on the administration of a dispatcher, so I cannot guide you on that subject. But after achieving the connectivity between the two dispatchers, the rest is the PI development task.
It seems that your scenario is not really a hard one. Play around with the tools(in PI) and try sample scenarios to get used to it. Here are some for your convenience:
And the PI (formerly called XI) library that covers almost everything is here:
http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw2004s/helpdata/en/0f/80243b4a66ae0ce10000000a11402f/frameset.htm
With the help of the documentation and the sample scenario blogs, you will be able to develop your scenario. But gathering the required skill will take about a month or so, depending on your performance.
After learning the basics, you also need to work on monitoring, alert definitions, going live pratice etc. also which you can also find examples in the blogs. Furthermore, if the messages exchanged are to be changed before reaching the ERP on the PI side, you will also need some mapping practice. Here are two blogs which will teach you graphical mapping in PI:
/people/sravya.talanki2/blog/2005/08/16/message-mapping-simplified--part-i
/people/sravya.talanki2/blog/2005/12/08/message-mapping-simplified-150-part-ii
A B2B scenario can be partly auto-configured after definition of relevant integration scenario in the Integration Builder so it might be a good idea to learn it. I'm assuming you don't need any business processes(which automates A2A and B2B processes, for example a full order-to-cash scenario involving many systems and communications with business logic), so you will mostly need configuration instead of development. You also won't need any ABAP or Java skills in your case.
The content on SDN about PI is pretty rich so I don't think you will be short on examples and instructions. Just search when you need something, almost every aspect is covered by now.
Hope these are useful, feel free to ask anything you may need.
Regards,
Gökhan