This blog serves as an introduction to an online demo that illustrates some of the initial Mapping Enhancements introduced in SAP NetWeaver Process Integration (PI) 7.1. With PI 7.1, SAP introduces significant new enhancements within the graphical mapping tool that will greatly facilitate the design and creation of message mappings going forward. The featured demo illustrates some of those enhancements in PI 7.1 including:
Importing Table Structures from a Database: this is really a prerequisite step needed for leveraging the new Graphical Support for JDBC Lookups feature. With graphical support for JDBC lookups, the requirement to create custom code to support the setup of a mapping lookup is eliminated. Initially in 7.1, graphical support is also available for RFC lookups.Function Libraries: with this feature, SAP fulfills a highly demanded feature from customers where you can create a library of your own custom functions and reuse them in any message mapping you want - the scope or visibility of the functions will not be limited to a particular mapping as in previous versions.Parameterized Message Mappings: this feature enables you to pass in parameters to a mapping which might allow you to use one mapping instead of several slightly different versions of a similar mapping to fulfill the minor differences in field value requirements.Mapping Output of Intermediate Fields to Multiple Target Fields: this feature allows for a subset of a mapping to be reused for multiple target fields instead of needlessly duplicating this common subset for each target field.General Notes:
There are other new features and enhancements available that are not covered in this demo (e.g. use of graphical variables, correcting structural inconsistencies, and others). However, these mapping topics along with those featured in the demo are covered in the SAP NetWeaver Process Integration 7.1: Mapping Enhancements Blog Series.Just FYI, for those of you who attended TechEd 2007, and particularly the Mapping Enhancements session, this demo will look familiar to you as it is based on the exercise for the TechEd session.Also, since ramp-up for SAP NetWeaver PI 7.1 only started in December 2007, most customers (at least as of the publication of this blog) will not have a PI 7.1 version at their disposal. So this demo mainly serves as a preview to most until PI 7.1 becomes generally available to all customers.
