After integrating both SAP and Non-SAP systems for several years being a PI developer. I had an opportunity to learn SAP MDM and enhance my skill set to a new level so decided to learn MDM as it would go hand in hand with SAP PI which is used to integrate with MDM for different business process scenario use cases. In this blog have tried to emphasize my understanding of SAP MDM from PI perspective and my journey towards learning SAP MDM.
As a PI developer we need to know both sides of B2B or A2A integration systems such as the detail about source and target systems which would be helpful when integrating these systems using SAP PI. For example, when learning MDM from the PI integration perspective we needed to understand the folder structures to which the data is extracted by MDM and folder path to which PI needs to connect to pick up a file then send it to target system. I soon learned that MDM uses tables to store the data but was interested to learn how MDM would store, manage, import and synchronize huge data volumes and maintain harmonization across an ERP, CRM and SCM landscape being an independent server installation.
During the course of learning MDM I discovered and adapted an approach of relating the concepts of MDM to PI functionality which made my understanding process better, easy and fast.
Please refer to the following link if you want to get an overview of MDM before learning technical aspects of MDM.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAP_NetWeaver_Master_Data_Management
Of the components SAP MDM which I recently mastered and will cover in my future blogs includes.
- MDM Console
- MDM Data Manager
- MDM Import Manager
- MDM Syndicator
MDM Console: In this module we develop the data structure using different table types depending up on the business requirement. This can be considered as developing the source and target data structure in SAP PI
MDM Data Manager: As the name suggest it is used to enter, update or maintain data. This module is used to enter, update or maintain the data into the data structure which is created using MDM console.
MDM Import Manager: This module is used to import data to MDM. From PI developer perspective it can be considered as inbound to MDM from different source system.
MDM Syndicator: This module is used to output the data from MDM to specific Ready folder of MDM which would be dispatched to different target systems. From PI developer perspective it can be considered as outbound from MDM to different target systems.
Installing MDM clients and connecting to backend system if the MDM backend system is up and running.
Step1: Download the MDM clients from service market place using authorized sUser credentials. I have described few more steps to download MDM 7.1 as have seen few blogs in which they mention service.sap.com/support and once people reach to the link they are lost in navigating to actual software download.
Browse following path: https://websmp201.sap-ag.de/support ->Software Downloads -> Installation and Upgrades->A-Z Index->Click M and go to SAP MDM -> SAP Netweaver MDM 7.1->Installation. You will find all the objects as shown in the screenshot below. Do a select all and add to download basket and start the download. Download speed depends up on your network connection.
Content added to download basket
Once the download is completed please extract the 51040422_part1 into a folder as shown in the screenshot below.
Browse through folder to Data_Units -> NW_MDM_71_SP08 and you can see list of different clients. Double click the clients which need to be installed and execute exe file and follow the instruction on the wizard. Please see below the installation process for MDM console client and same method can be adapted for rest of the client’s installation.
Connecting to MDM backend system using MDM Console client
Step1: Double click the MDM console created on the local desktop.
Step2: Right click on SAP MDM Servers and select Mount MDM Servers.
Step3: New window pops up.
Step4: For the first time we need to provide the IP address of the server to connect and next time it would be available in dropdown menu for selection. Enter the IP address in the box highlighted in red and press OK. It would take few seconds to load the console and new screen pops up as shown below in which you can find the server details like IP, version with service pack details, Instance and port used to connect backend MDM servers.
In my next blog will provide an overview of components in MDM Console and instructions to create tables in MDM Console.
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