S/4 HANA Interface Option - IDOC vs API

[amitgoyal]

Hi

We are implementing S/4 HANA(greenfield implementation ) and we have several interfaces that we need to build. 95% of these interfaces are with external third party non-SAP systems. We are contemplating whether to use IDOC for Interfacing or use API's for the interfacing.

We are inclined towards using IDOC's because of the following reasons:

1. It is widely available for most of our business objects
2. Change pointer mechanism available out of the box which will be required for our Master Data delta scenarios.
3. Reporting, Debugging, Re-processing and Troubleshooting tools available with IDOC
4. We already have a middleware to convert IDOC's to required format for outbound and vice a versa for the inbound.
5. Only a couple of the interfaces are real time interfaces and we believe we can achieve a near real-time using IDOC by using the immediate dispatch option.

I would be interested to find out if API can be as beneficial in our case? And What monitoring, tools are offered by API technology?

Amit

[Ryan-Crosby]

I wouldn't go for a one size fits all approach... in some cases IDoc will be superior and in other cases it may be API. Each case should be evaluated separately so a determination can be made based on factors unique to each scenario.

[amitgoyal]

I agree.

In case of API what are the monitoring/troubleshooting tools provided by SAP?

Like in case of IDOCS we have WE02/WE05 + BD87 + WE19 and so on for debugging, troubleshooting, reprocessing.

[pagarwal997 · Accepted solution]

My suggestion based on the past 3 implementations is to go with API first if it doesn't meet the requirements go with IDOC. APIs are extensively more user-friendly to work with than IDOCs (in my opinion at least).

My comments for each of your reasons:

1. It is widely available for most of our business objects (SAP invests heavily in APIs - api.sap.com will give you a list of all available APIs)
2. Change pointer mechanism available out of the box which will be required for our Master Data delta scenarios. SAP has DRF for this using APIs (we currently use it and it works great)
3. Reporting, Debugging, Re-processing and Troubleshooting tools available with IDOC (AIF, IWFND, etc and other tools are available, however I do think IDOC tcodes are superior so far)
4. We already have a middleware to convert IDOC's to required format for outbound and vice a versa for the inbound. (I believe it's hard to comment one way or another on this because during implementations we often change functionality so you would end up changing some of that mapping anyway)
5. Only a couple of the interfaces are real time interfaces and we believe we can achieve a near real-time using IDOC by using the immediate dispatch option. (APIs from SAP are realtime vs near realtime 🙂 )

[amitgoyal · Accepted solution]

Hi Pranay, Thankyou for your detailed response. AIF for monitoring involves additional licenses. You are correct API framework is not that matured in these area( Monitoring, Reprocessing, Tracing etc ).