Book Image

Microsoft BizTalk 2010: Line of Business Systems Integration

Book Image

Microsoft BizTalk 2010: Line of Business Systems Integration

Overview of this book

Microsoft BizTalk is an integration and connectivity server solution that allows businesses to connect disparate systems easily. In today’s business climate of mergers and acquisitions, more and more enterprises are forced to exchange data across disparate Line of Business systems using integration brokers like BizTalk Server 2010. What is often overlooked when integrating these systems is the pre-requisite knowledge that ERP and CRM systems demand in order to effectively integrate them. No longer is this knowledge locked up in the heads of expensive consultants. Gain an edge within your organization by developing valuable skills in the area of Line of Business integration from this book.This book will show you how to integrate BizTalk with Line of Business systems using practical scenarios. Each chapter will take a Line of Business system, introduce some pre-requisite knowledge and demonstrate how you can integrate BizTalk with that Line of Business system, and then provide guidance based upon real world experience, taking your BizTalk knowledge further.This book will enable you to master how to integrate BizTalk with Line of Business systems effectively. The book starts by highlighting the technical foundation of WCF-LOB adapters and the common steps and important properties pertaining to popular WCF-LOB adapters. You will then move on to an overview of how to integrate with Microsoft SQL Server using the WCF based SQL Server adapter. The book then dives into topics such as integrating BizTalk Server with Microsoft Dynamics CRM, building BizTalk/SAP integrated solutions using IDocs, the differences between IDocs and RFCs/BAPIs, and integrating BizTalk with Windows Azure AppFabric Service Bus amongst others.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Microsoft BizTalk 2010: Line of Business Systems Integration
Credits
Foreword
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Custom IDOCs


The previous example included an "out of the box" CONF32 SAP IDOC. While the idea of being able to integrate with SAP out of the box is extremely compelling, the reality is it just isn't realistic to expect an out of the box IDOC for each integration scenario that your organization is interested in. Most organizations will attempt to use the out of the box IDOCs before looking to build a custom IDOC. When forced to build, there are a few options that SAP Developers have:

  • Extend existing IDOCs.

  • Copy an IDOC structure and modify as you see fit.

  • Start a new IDOC from Scratch.

    Extending an IDOC involves keeping an IDOC structure intact, but adding additional segments that are required in your scenario. This is an ideal solution when you are only missing a few segments and want to leverage SAP's existing efforts.

    If SAP has an IDOC that is somewhat similar to your scenario, you can copy that existing structure and then add or remove segments as required.

    While SAP does provide a rich...