I have a typical scenario. My requirement is to get a particular IDOC, convert it into the canonical and sending it to partners after converting to EDI. But there are two EDI mapping services. Based on sender ID and receiver ID information, we need to decide which mapping service has to be invoked. Here what we planned to do is submit the canonical to TN and invoke a processing rule based on sender ID, receiver ID etc. and then based on it, any one of the EDI mapping services can be invoked. After converting to EDI, it has to be again submitted to TN for sending to partners.
Now is there any way to avoid the first submission to TN (i.e. to decide which mapping service can be invoked based on processing rule)? Without submitting to TN, can we decide which mapping service can be invoked ? Could anybody throw light on this ?
Maybe I’m missing something, but why not branch on the partner value and invoke the corresponding service per possibility?
But your first option offers more tracebility for the sake of monitoring. This is the way we our client works. The disadvantage is that processing rules are not very manageable in versions < 6.5, so if you have a lot of rules, you may find adapting them will cause a headache on the long run.
The brief answer to the question is, yes you can most certainly determine which mapping service to invoke without using TN.
The longer answer is yes but why avoid using TN for this task? One of the primary tasks of TN is to determine the desired action based on a document type, document contents, sender, & receiver or some combination. The scenario you describe is precisely what TN is designed for.
You need to decide which sort of maintenance tasks you want to live with. Undoubtedly the number of partners and document types will grow over time. When you add new partners and/or document types, do you want to edit and deploy a service or do you want to edit profiles and rules? The answer to this question may be derived in part from the underlying motivation of your post–what do you hope to gain from “avoid(ing) the first submission to TN?”
Thanks for your suggestions. I am planning to read the canonical and invoke the appropriate mapping service. I will get back to you if I face any issues.
You can do it in both ways using TN processing rule(criteria sender/receive or doctype) help or custom service to determine which main flow to invoke depends on the partner/attribute values comes in your canonical document.
So try to design in nice fashion that not makes no complication in the logic which helps everyone in the team.