Designing Integration Processes

Specifying the Integration Process

Using a graphical process editor, you specify the “inner workings” of an integration process.

Specifying an integration process is composed of the following main tasks:

1. Specifying service interfaces

2. Using the graphical process editor

Specifying Service Interfaces

To enable the integration process to exchange messages with other application components, you need service interfaces. For service interfaces used in integration processes, you have to select Abstract as the Category .

An abstract service interface is an interface that has no defined direction initially. Whereas outbound or inbound interfaces have an implemented interface in an application system as a counterpart, abstract service interfaces are only used by integration processes to send or receive messages. You can use the same abstract service interface to receive or to send. You cannot generate a proxy for this interface type.

More information: Process Signature

Using the Graphical Process Editor

These are the main elements of an integration process:

• Container elements

  You define the data the integration process has to process (its “variables” ) as container elements. Container elements can have the following types:

  • Abstract interface

    For messages (to be used in receive or send steps) described by corresponding abstract service interfaces.

  • Simple XSD Data Type

    For process control elements, such as counters.

  • Receiver Used in a receiver determination step (see below).

    The actual list of receivers is determined at runtime based on a receiver determination in the Integration Directory.

  More information: Defining Process Data as Container Elements

• Configurable parameters

  You can define parameters whose values you can specify later, at configuration time. This gives you greater flexibility in handling the integration process.

  More information: Defining Configurable Parameters

• Process steps

  You construct the integration process out of different process steps. You can use different step types. For example, you use a send step to send a message to another integration process or to a business system. When specifying a process step, you choose the corresponding container elements. For example, when you define a receiver determination step, you need a container element of the type Receiver to assign to the step.

  For detailed information, see Step Types . However, note the following:

  • Transformation steps are used to transform messages. Therefore, these steps refer to an operation mapping. You can use 1:n multi-mappings to split a message into multiple messages, n:1 multi-mappings to bundle multiple messages into a single message, or 1:1 mappings for message transformations (see also Designing and Configuring Multi-Mappings ).

  • In receive steps and send steps, you refer to the container elements for the corresponding abstract service interfaces.

  • In a receiver determination step, you refer to the corresponding Receiver container element.

  • In switch steps, fork steps, and loop steps, you can define conditions.

    More information: Define a Condition

  • User decision steps enable users to make decisions that influence the processing of the integration process. The intended user receives a dialog work item in the workflow inbox at runtime.

• Message correlations

  You use a correlation to join messages that belong together to the same process instance. In a correlation you define the message elements (for example, a customer number) by which messages are to be correlated.

  More information: Correlation: Defining Assignment of Msgs to Process Instances

• Exception Handling

  More information: Dealing with Exceptions

• Deadline Monitoring

  More information: Deadline Monitoring

• Defining Sync/Async Communication

  You can define a “sync/async bridge” to enable the communication between a synchronously calling business system and an asynchronously called business system.

  More information: Defining Sync/Async Communication

You define these elements using the graphical process editor.

More information: Process Editor

Embedding the Integration Process into a Process Integration Scenario

To enable the integration process to exchange messages with other (application) components, you have to embed the integration process into a process integration scenario as the overall model. In a process integration scenario, you use application components to model the communication partners.

You use application components to represent the basic entities that exchange messages with each other. An application component represents an overall application area, such as SAP SCM. Those “process steps” that exchange messages with each other are modeled as actions within an application component.

You find the detailed description of the concept as well as modeling guidelines under Defining Process Integration Scenarios .

You can navigate from the corresponding application component to the integration process editor to display or further specify the “inner workings” of the integration process.