Example: Deadline Monitoring for Receipt of a Response Message 

In productive scenarios, business systems often send request messages (for example, a purchase order) and wait for response messages (for example, a purchase order response) from another business system.

If you want to monitor whether a particular response message is received by a predefined deadline, you define an integration process for the message exchange. In the integration process you define a block with a deadline branch to monitor the deadline.

You can define how the missed deadline is to be reacted to in different ways. The following table shows the various options. You can find the examples in the Enterprise Services Repository under SAP Basis → SAP Basis <release number>, namespace http://sap.com/xi/XI/System/Patterns.  

Reaction	Description	Example
Alert	If the deadline is missed, an alert is triggered and the process continues to wait for the response message to be received.	BpmPatternReqRespAlert
Terminate with Error Message	An exception is raised if the deadline is missed. An error message is created and sent in the corresponding exception handler.	BpmPatternReqRespTimeOut

 

Example Process

The first receive step receives the request message, starts the process, and activates the correlation Correlation. The correlation links the request and response messages by means of an ID (for example, the purchase order number). The subsequent send step sends the message according to the receiver determination configured in the Integration Directory.

The receive step which receives the response message uses the Correlation correlation. A subsequent send step sends the response message according to the receiver determination configured in the Integration Directory. To define deadline monitoring for these two steps, both were defined within a block with a deadline branch.

Alert Following Missed Deadline

The following graphic illustrates the process definition:

The deadline branch is executed if, 24 hours after the block was created, the block has still not been processed. In this example, the control step triggers an alert in the deadline branch. The receive step continues to wait for the response message to be received.

Terminate with Error Message Following Missed Deadline

The following graphic illustrates the process definition:

The deadline branch is executed if, 24 hours after the block was created, the block has still not been processed. In this example, the control step triggers an exception in the deadline branch. Processing continues in the corresponding exception handler. A transformation step in the exception handler then creates an error message. The error message contains the ID from the request message, which, when received, activated Correlation. If the ID is a purchase order number, for example, you can see for which purchase order number no purchase order response has yet been received.

A subsequent send step sends the error message according to the receiver determination configured in the Integration Directory. The block has now been fully processed.