Hi,
I am new to WM. Right now SAP is using MQLink to send data to MQ and we have application(Mercator6.7) reads the MQ message(IDOC format) and converts to XML to XML application(Custom defined).
SAP dosn’t want to change any of their process. What are the best chances to communicate WM from and to SAP?
Does WM has all the SAP IDOC structures inbuilt to read the IDOC message directly from IBM MQ?
Your suggessions are greatly appreciated. Please suggest me some solutions, what you all are using to cummunicate with SAP systems?
Hi vasilis,
Many thanks for your reply. You are right. But, SAP don’t want to allow other Application to sit in SAP or any transports done in SAP.
They want to use MQ link and put data to MQ. It is our responsibility to process these.
SAP provide the IDOC structure from their transaction we63 which we use to create input structure in Mercator as Mercator has IDOC importer. In this scenario, If WM is not communicated to SAP directly how can I get the input structure? The same thing with the Mainframe. They are providing a cobol copy book as input structure. Does WM has any kind of importers to create input structure except DTD, SCHEMA, XML?
Here we are getting complex input data structure and it is very difficult to crete the Flatfile Schema with Positions for thousands of fields. Custom IDOC structure, forget it.
I am unable to convense both with SAP and mainframe applications to use WM. Our whole enterprise use MQ Series as communication channel.
In SAP you can use transaction we60 to create a DTD for an IDoc and then import the DTD into webMethods (Documentation > Create DTD). This will enable you to view the IDoc structure in the format of a webMethods document structure.
However, when it comes to converting an actual IDoc to this webMethods document structure and vice versa, we use the webMethods SAP adapter to do this.
We also interface with MQ and use the webMethods MQ adapter to do this. These 2 adapters would greatly simplify your integration.
You can generate DTD from within SAP for any IDOC, as long as the customer runs R/3 4.6 C and higher.
If they run an earlier version, then you can use a comman line tool webMethod’s provides to fetch IDOC metadata from SAP. If you need it you can get it from webm support.
You basically can import a DTD/schema into the webm developer and generate a Document type which will correspond to your IDOC.
You can use the webMethods’ MQ series adapter to fetch IDOCs out of MQ.
webMethods has a mainframe product.
webm support should be able to help you if there are any utilities which import copy books and generate IS Document types. I believe there is such a thing.
The SAP adapter and the IS server don’t have to run on the same server as SAP.
They can run on a totally different machine.
The MQ series, Mercator, route is pretty common and companies have used it in the past because they didn’t have a single solution which could receive IDOCs, queue them up if needed, and convert them into something else.
webMethods is exactly that.
A single solution which can do what MQ & Mercator can do together.
In other words you simplify things, improve performance, and you can have less possible points of failure, since you don’t have so many hand overs from one product to the next.
This is also the idea behind SAP’s own Business Connector, which is basically the webMethod’s product licensed and rebranded by SAP.
Do don’t take my word. Take SAP’s word. -
From what you have said so far, I can tell your integration scenario and the customer requirements are pretty common. To avoid reinventing the wheel, I suggest your company contacts webMethods.
We have architects who have done such integrations many times and can help you get the best out of the webMethods products you are using.
I understand that one can create DTD from an IDOC, and one can create a wm DOC from a DTD. How can I enforce constraints on fields in the DOC when manipulating it within a wm Flow?
For example, say I have the following IDOC structure:
Field1 (1 characters)
Field2 (2 characters)
Field3 (3 characters)
It is a simple operation to concatenate these fields into a string (ABBCCC), however I want to enforce the string lengths. How do I do this without hardcoding the lengths in my flow?
