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Benefits for Outbound interfaces?

robphelan
Participant
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I’ve been thinking about running outbound through AIF.. But, I’m trying to figure out what is the benefit AIF provides for those.

I can certainly see how inbound interfaces greatly benefit especially when we have multiple sources of information all doing the same thing (Creating A/P docs for instance)… We have many inbound scenarios in production right now.

But what about outbounds? Typically, most companies only send 1 interface out to a 3rd party so I don't see efficiencies gained in common mappings.

Thanks,

Robert.

Accepted Solutions (1)

Accepted Solutions (1)

MichalKrawczyk
Active Contributor
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Hi Robert,

>>>I’ve been thinking about running outbound through AIF.. But, I’m trying to figure out what is the benefit AIF provides for those.

my few cents:

- if you monitor inbound in AIF then certainly you'd like to use the same tool for outbound (so consistency - having a single transaction)

- content based message search for outbound transactions

- for IDOCs you can do the mapping in the second AIF interface without using any IDOC user exists/ enhancements

- hope it will be the same for outbound proxies as for outbound IDOCs in the future

Best Regards,

Michal Krawczyk

robphelan
Participant
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Thanks for the response.

Are you on the AIF development team by any chance?

The reason I ask is that I'd like to make a suggestion for a future development. It may be in version 3.0 but I haven't had a chance to play around with 3.0 yet.

For PI proxy interfaces, I see AIF has the ability to generate structures automatically based on the PI development. This greatly simplifies the creation of those structures in the ABAP stack.

For inbound interfaces specifically, I really like to keep control of the interface in the ABAP stack. So what I typically do is initiate the PI data transfer from a Z-program. That way the user has the ability to trigger the job on an ad-hoc basis as well as having it scheduled to run periodically.

Since I do this, AIF Sees this as an OUTBOUND interface, not an inbound interface, and generates the structures as a destination structure instead of a source structure.

What would be great is the ability to designate the structure as a source or destination structure. Does that make sense?

MichalKrawczyk
Active Contributor
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Hi Robert,

>>>>Are you on the AIF development team by any chance?

I'm not working for SAP if this was your question but I'm part of the IFG for Integration group and an SAP Mentor so we can always try to influence SAP with good ideas 

>>>For PI proxy interfaces, I see AIF has the ability to generate structures automatically based on the PI development

I think the word generate is a bit misused here - AIF only populates AIF structures from proxy structures, it does not generate anything new

>>>>Since I do this, AIF Sees this as an OUTBOUND interface, not an inbound interface, and generates the structures as a destination structure instead of a source structure.

that is correct - that's why SAP uses SAP and RAW structures and not source target as SAP and RAW structures can be different depending on the interface type (inbound, outbound). So it's exactly as described in the description of the SAP and RAW structures right ? So why would you want to change that ? 

Thank you for the update, hope I didn't confuse even more 

Best Regards,

Michal Krawczyk

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