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033 – What Integration challenges I see

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In this podcast about Figaf´s Integration Regression Tool I take a look at some of the challenges, that SAP is facing with integration.

As an independent developer of both tools and courses regarding SAP I get to talk to quite a few customers when presenting my tool. And I can see how the tool can help them in the process of planning their workflow.

Some of the most common challenges I see are as follow:

  • How the change in integration
  • Cloud means
  • S4 also impacts the way most will be doing integration

Key question: Where is your architecture?

Many people working with SAP are struggling with understanding CPI and how it should fit into their organization. There seems to be a spike in the number of requests for projects, and the developers have to skilled in both CPI and PI. It is of course very important to ensure that the developers do not break anything. The key question is where your architecture should be.

Automize your  testing

Figaf´s IRT is a tool made for testing. It will automize many of the things you do manuale, and it will lower your number of errors. It will help you test:  

  • What kind of impact it will have.
  • Will be more widly used
  • Hope that we will be the place of choise for customers wanting a better testing framework
  • Will see how we can integrate with it, when customers are there

Monitoring

IRT also offers Monitoring:

  • CPI is quite a different way to monitor than PI.
  • Need some external tool for it

The best way to implement

Finally, IRT gives you great input when you have to find out, when is the best way to implement:

  • If you have the data in the delivery but
  • Can see how the tool fits your organisation
  • Regression when making changes.

030 – What is your SAP Integration Migration

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In this last episode of the Integration Podcast, I’m talking about something that will probably affect you next year. I know a lot of companies are planning migration projects. Therefore does it make sense to talk about it here, so you can get my views on the topic.

I’m covering my views on

  • Dual stack to Single stack migration
  • Should you upgrade if you have a single stack 7.31/7.4 system to 7.5 and what you will get
  • Third Party to SAP PI/PO
  • Using of Cloud Integration Content
  • Seeburger migration
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I created a video while recording the podcast.

Migration Planning

At Figaf we are working on improving the IRT tool, so you can use it to gain an understanding of your SAP Integration. So you can see how many times a given message mapping, Java or XSL mapping has been executed. I think it will make it a lot easier to understand who big your integration effort will be. It should also be able to recognize which Message Mappings is using the Seeburger Message format.

Once you have a plan and an overview it is easier to start estimating the number of resources and developers you need for the project. Can you do it with your existing developers or do you need more consultants. It also depends on the number of hours you need to spend on the migration.

 

Business Case for a migration

Nobody cares about you running your Migration Project, and the business would probably prefer you did not do it. Because you will not be able to deliver new integration for a period of time. The big cust will though be if you don’t do it and are stuck on an unsupported version of the SAP PI system. Also, it will be more difficult to make new development and if you have to create ccBPMs that need to be converted at some point in the future to a bigger cost.

If they are going to be involved because of the testing, it may be an idea to get the Figaf IRT application to perform business test so the business doesn’t need to spend time on it.

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Today we're going to return to the subject of testing and look at another case study. This time we're joined by Peter Atling who recently worked on the PI/PO and webMethods upgrade at AkzoNobel As the test manager Peter executed several kinds of testing including regression testing. At the beginning of the project Peter was asked to find a tool that could handle some automated testing. At AkzoNobel testing middleware is not that easy. Over the last couple of years many interfaces have been implemented. The company uses PI mainly for application to application interfaces. 500 interfaces are being run over the system. The company needed to implement automated testing in order to better improve the system. Peter downloaded one of the earliest versions of Figaf's IRT to implement regression testing. There was a serious discussion about the use of an automated tool for this kind of work. They tend to want to do some tests for themselves. It was the mapping function that won the day because it removes the need to check all the fields. Their users want see that the interface is running. But Peter thinks as the use of this tool becomes more commonplace there will be more confidence in it's use. Peter feels the tool is really useful for fast growing companies who depend on PI for their delivery process. Without a good regression testing tool problems with PI can become a bottleneck. Convincing the development team to use the IRT was fairly easy because of it's ease of use.

008 Testing SAP PI/PO at AkzoNobel

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Today we’re going to return to the subject of testing and look at another case study. This time we’re joined by Pieter Atling who recently worked on the SAP PI/PO and webMethods upgrade at AkzoNobel As the test manager Pieter executed several kinds of testing including regression testing. At the beginning of the project, Pieter was asked to find a tool that could handle some automated testing.

Pieter Atling

SAP expert Pieter Atling

At AkzoNobel testing middleware is a huge task as this is for most of the companies. Over the last couple of years many interfaces have been implemented. The company uses SAP PI mainly for application to application A2A interfaces. 500 interfaces are being run over the system. The company needed to implement automated testing in order to better improve the system. Pieter downloaded one of the earliest versions of Figaf’s IRT to implement regression testing.

Besides regression testing with the IRT tooling also end-to-end testing is done to make sure the interface is working as it should work. The expectation is that with the help of the tool upgrades could be done more frequently so that only regression tests have to be done combined with some manual testing done by the technical teams and that the user is not involved  or just limited involved. But Pieter thinks as the use of this tool becomes more commonplace there will be more confident in it’s use.

The approach how regression testing is done with IRT, is more or less the same as the approach followed for regression the webMethods platform that is also used by AkzoNobel.

Pieter feels the tool is really useful for fast growing companies who depend on SAP PI for their delivery process. Without a good regression testing tool problems with SAP PI can become a bottleneck. Convincing the development team to use the IRT was fairly easy because of it’s ease of use.