Question related to concept of PCK

[Former Member]

Hi All.

I am quite a newbie to XI and am only learning it thru online help. I have one conceptual question related to PCK.

My understanding is that PCK is needed by a small business company to communicate to its larger partner which already has XI running. Correct me if I am wrong here itself.

Now if the larger business partner already has XI, why does the smaller one need a PCK at all? The XI instance on the larger partner will have all the necessary adapters to understand any format send by the partner. So even if the partner(smaller) sends any format- be it IDOC/HTTP/FTP, the XI instance on larger partner will have its adapters ready to perform the conversion.

Then why is this PCK needed at all?

Thanks in advance. Hope my query is clear

Regards.

Samant

[MichalKrawczyk · Accepted solution]

Hi Samant,

PCK is not needed in all cases but...

let me give you a few examples:

- a small company wants to send XML data to a biger company, the small company has SAP and knows that the big one has XI... why would the big company want to do anything in their XI? the big one may just show in what XML format is expects the data and how can thier adapter be reached... all of the mappings and transformations have to be on the small company side

- the same small company wants to fetch the data from their legacy system - but this legacy systems supports very strange format... on the PCK basis you can build your own JCA adapters so this format can be translated and send to PCK and then to XI

these are just two reasons but I there might be much more:)

Regards,

michal

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Samant,

Your question is a very good one, Though I have not worked on PCK, I can share my ideas based on some brain storming session I had with our collegues & business partners.

While executing projects, there are technical & operational issues. For example, when you access any HR related data of a UK based organisation then all those who work on that project have to undertake data security pledge. Like wise there are many constraints on data & system accesses, which vary across organisations.

When you use PCK*, irrespective of different systems what the small vendors have, you communicate with your Big company's XI system only on the XI's msging protocol http(s)/SOAP. This allows a fair amount of ownership of data/access related issues to the small partners.

• -> you go for PCK, when there is no need for small vendors to go for XI.

Hope this is of some help. As Michal said there might be much more (or even better) reasons.

Michal, when you say "all of the mappings and transformations have to be on the small company side", what exactly you mean by this. can you please eloborate.

Thanks & Regards

Vishnu