Additional Blogs by SAP
cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 
Former Member
A new feature, point-to-point (P2P) connection, is introduced in PI 7.1. P2P connection provides messaging without going through the Integration Engine, but still allows developer to centrally design the interfaces using PI 7.1's Enterprise Service Repository.

By using the Integraiton Directory in PI 7.1, we can also centrally configure the P2P connection for backend SAP systems. The configurations will automatically be distributed or propagated to the backend SAP systems.

Direct Connection is when one system calls another system directly without using the Integration Server as a central instance. Communication takes place using the Web services runtime.

When applications are coupled tightly they can exchange messages directly - without a redirection through a middleware (like the Integration Server) that offers services such as mapping. However, this peer-to-peer message exchange can still be configured (technical address of the Receiver System, authentication, security settings etc) in one central place.

Below provides an introduction to the configuration of Direct Connection.

A detail article of the step-by-step guide is available from:
Point-to-Point Direct Connection Design and Configuration in SAP using NetWeaver Processing Integrat...

An offline demo of the design and configuration is also available from:
Demo for Design and Configuration of Direct Connection in SAP NetWeaver PI 7.1

Design and Configuration Steps:

The basic steps required for the complete design and configuration process are as follow:

  1. Design the inbound and outbound interfaces in the Enterprise Service (ES) Repository.
  2. If any of the business systems is an SAP system, then ABAP proxies will have to be generated on the corresponding backend SAP system, using the interfaces in the previous step. The primary reason is that during the activation process in the Integration Directory (ID), the proxy objects of the interfaces will be checked. If the proxies do not exist, then the activation will not be completely successful.
  3. Configure and activate the ID objects, specifically the receiver communication channel and the direct connection.
  4. Test the connection using the ABAP proxies. (Sample proxies and programs are included in the appendix.)

Point-to-point connection allows a much greater message throughput performance, simply because a middleware is not involved in message processing. However, because of this, services such mappings, dynamic receiver determination, ccBPM (as provided by the middleware) are no longer available during the message exchange.

When an environment contains many point-to-point connections, the administration and maintenance of connections becomes quite cumbersome to support. This is where the benefit of SAP Netweaver 7.1 Process Integration (PI) becomes obvious. PI provides a tool and infrastructure to centrally design, configure and support of the point-to-point connection. With PI, message types and interface can be designed in the Enterprise Service (ES) Repository, and connection configurations and communication channels can be done in the Integration Directory (ID).

10 Comments