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 vs. out-of-box RFCs/BAPIs


During a recent project, I worked with an SAP team to determine which interfaces we could leverage to address our business requirements. Unfortunately, this was a very exhaustive exercise. Unless people on the project have used the out-of-box RFC/BAPI before, there is usually an element of trial and error to determine whether or not an interface is a good fit. It is easy to browse the SAP interface catalogue (via Consume Adapter Service Wizard) using keywords to locate a suitable interface only to be disappointed that it doesn't quite fit your scenario. For instance, we were interested in finding a customer in SAP by calling a BizTalk interface from Dynamics CRM. We found a BAPI called BAPI_CUSTOMER_FIND that "should" be a perfect fit. Unfortunately, this BAPI did not return all of the master data that we needed. Another BAPI called BAPI_CUSTOMER_GETDETAIL could be used in conjunction with the FIND BAPI to address our requirements. This meant that we would...