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nageshcaparthy
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
0 Kudos

Hi All,

This is the third week of OpenSAP course for Application Integration Made Simple with SAP HANA Cloud Integration.

The two weeks has been quite exciting and I have got a lot to learn on HCP Integration Services and was running around trying to setup my HCI account. I am still in the process of it and will share more details once I have it. Hands-on exercises are pretty much pending due to the requirement of CA-Signed certificates. Pretty sad and unhappy about this section of configurations as it really adds up the cost and getting CA signed certificates would be difficult for practise and training. I really hope SAP come up with the Trial Account quickly for all users like HCP Trial.

Getting back to the course, it is structured like this:

Week 1: Getting Started - My previous blog

Unit 1 – Supporting SAP’s Cloud Strategy

Unit 2 – Introduction to Web UI

Unit 3 – Configuring Pre-Packaged Integration Content

Unit 4 – Creating Integration Processes from Scratch

Unit 5 – Working with Data in SAP HANA Cloud Integration

Week 2: Enterprise Integration Patterns – My Previous blog

Unit 1 - Enriching Content by Calling OData Services

Unit 2 - Message Translation Using Mappings

Unit 3 - Content-Based Routing

Unit 4 - Splitter/Gather – Working with Lists

Unit 5 - Asynchronous Communication

Week 3: Advanced Topics and Roadmap - (This blog)

Unit 1 - Timer-Based Start of Integration Flows

Unit 2 - Structuring Large Integration Flows

Unit 3 - The Adapter Development Kit

Unit 4 - Content Reuse Between HCI and SAP PO

Unit 5 - Outlook – Strategy and Roadmap

In Week2 Blog of mine, I was exploring more options on the Palette and its purpose and was hoping to see few example on them to help the beginners like me to get started. I guess Week3 pretty much covers some of the scenarios like Timer, Large Integration Flows and Adapter Development Kit which is being very useful. Some of my interest was on SOAP to oData conversion and was practising on it with the help of a blog by midhun.vp , which has all the details on how to get it working, however, I really took some time to understand how the XML annotations and how the Services and Endpoints were added to the configurations in HCI and the Week 3 indeed makes it simple and has the explanations of them. So let us get started with Week 3 now.

Unit 1 - Timer-Based Start of Integration Flows

As we all know by this time that HCP Integration Services can be used to transfer data between Cloud to On-Premises or On-Demand, the previous weeks we did see some of the examples on how they are done. If some of the scenarios, there may be a requirement for frequent checks to be made on the existing data store to see if there is any data for further analysis, it can be a data updates from SFSF system to ECC or any 3rd party System Services sending their status updates to a FTP server which may need processing, example an IoT related machine data uploaded to SFTP, which may need further processing to Analytics Servers can be maintained in a Timely fashion with the help of the Timer-Based Integration Flows.

In Unit 1, covers this entire scenario and considers an example of Invoking a Web-Service to retrieve weather information for a City and store it on SFTP Server. The unit also explains how to use the Timer Events different options to run the process which may be Run Once, Schedule on Day or Schedule to Recur. Most importantly, as I said before, there are few SOAP channel settings which need to be configured on and how to find those details from the SOAP service / WSDL file is explained in this Unit. I repeat this is very important so spending some time on this would be very much necessary for a beginner. Quick Overview of Timer is as below:

Reference – Unit 1 Slide 2 & 3

Unit 2 - Structuring Large Integration Flows


The name of the Unit defines the topic of this session, we discuss in details on how to handle Integrations Flows with complex scenarios and not losing the benefits of the graphical environment. This can be achieved by structuring the large integration flows using subprocess. This unit also guides us on the recommendation on our process models at a manageable size and not more than 10 shapes, just a rule of thumb, and if they are getting bigger they can be split into several sub-processes which can be called as the parent process.

Furthermore, this Integration is explained with an example of SOAP Adapter, and using a new shape “doTheWork” which helps to invoke a local integration process. The video describes the necessary configurations, shows the Response message and how Data Flow (Header, Properties, and Body) is transferred at each stage during the operation.

Reference – Unit 2 Recording 2:50

Unit 3 - The Adapter Development Kit

In the previous units, we understood how HCI can help us to integrate solutions with the Adapter (e.g. SFSF Adapter) and how to build integrations scenarios from the scratch. In this Unit, we will learn about Adapter Development, a particular system where there are no prepacked solutions available from SAP (Adapters are shipped by SAP with HCI and some of them are provided by partners).  To do the Adapter development HCI introduces traditional Eclipse environment and its related developments kits environment for development.

Note: WEB UI which we using for Modelling cannot be used for Adapter developments

To download the Development kit, you may visit: https://tools.hana.ondemand.com/#hci

The Unit also talks about how Apache Camel is used for developing adapters, for more details on you can refer to HCI documentation, there is also Java Docs and programming guidelines available. Recommend to watch the video for more understanding on Adapter Development Kit.

Reference – Unit 3 Slide 29

Unit 4 - Content Reuse Between HCI and SAP PO

This unit covers content reuse between SAP HANA Cloud Integration and SAP Process Orchestration; Process Orchestration has a static pipeline with receiver determination, interface determination, and mapping; whereas HCI Integration pipeline is flexible because it is relying on the Apache Camel framework underneath. With this capability, HCI has been running side by side with Process orchestration with the static pipeline.  The content developed for SAP HCI can also be executed on SAP Process Orchestration and that makes it interesting for customers to define their own pace to move into the cloud.

That being sap, we look at the full details

Reference – Unit 4 Slide 45


HCI allows us to develop our own scenarios and deploy them which we can use to Run and Monitor them on the cloud within HCI. With this, we can also download the same content and Run this on SAP Process Orchestration.

Process Orchestration is an on-premise solution for all integration and orchestration aspects, such as classic application-to-application integration, also business-to-business integration, as well as executing business processes, for example, or running business routes. So it is really the one-stop shop for everything that has to do with integration and orchestration.

The unit continues with the explanation on how to download the zip file packages and how to deploy the packages in Cloud Integration Cockpit etc.

Unit 5 - Outlook – Strategy and Roadmap

It is certainly important to the users and organizations to understand the product as is and the future extensions and upcoming capabilities, so here in this unit we recognize the key features and its Roadmap in the near releases.

We also get to meet sindhu.gangadharan who helps us to understand the Roadmap.

Reference – Unit 5 Slide 54

As in the slide, we can see the Key Capabilities and Supported Applications of Today, Planned Innovations and Future Direction.

HCI also encourages the partners to come and build content on HCI, which translates both into packaged integration, as well as new connectivity options to third-party solutions that exist out there. HCI is also focused on having Transport Mechanism of Integrations content between HCI landscape like development and production etc. Other things like API management for Unified access and security; B2B integrations, Messaging Services – IoT are further explained in this unit.

At the end, a book of Getting Started with SAP HCI,  and Key links on SCN, Product Roadmap, User Groups, Idea place is shared.

With this, OpenSAP Course on HCI comes to an end. Please ensure you finish your 3rd week of Unit Test before Wednesday, August 10, 2016, 09:00 (UTC) and Final Exam after this.

If you are interested in staying tuned to HCI updates, you may follow the SCN blog by @mariana.mihaylova - Get started with SAP HANA Cloud Platform, integration service (HCI) in Process Integration (PI) & SOA Middleware

Happy Learning…!!!

Note: I am new to Process Orchestration and started with HCI a few months back. If you feel any of my above understanding needs corrections, please feel free leave a comment.

Regards,

Nagesh

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