| Agile Product Lifecycle Management Integration Pack for SAP: Design to Release Implementation Guide Release 3.6 E88840-01 |
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| Agile Product Lifecycle Management Integration Pack for SAP: Design to Release Implementation Guide Release 3.6 E88840-01 |
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This chapter provides an overview of the process integration for Item Attribute (IA) Update and discusses solution assumptions, the IA Update integration sequence, Oracle Application Integration Architecture (Oracle AIA) services for IA Update, and IA Update integration customization points.
Required as part of the Manufacturing Update process for product information synchronization, the Item Attributes information from the Enterprise Resouce Planning (ERP) system is required to be updated in Agile. The term Item applies to both Parts and Documents in Agile considering the documents are integrated in to SAP as a part object only and not as a Document Info Record (DIR). DIR is not in scope for this version of integration.
Since item attribute information can exist in multiple plants in the ERP system, it is supported only for cases where the system can accurately determine which plant in ERP to pick up item attribute information from.
The update of Item Attribute information from ERP to Agile Process Lifecycle Management (PLM) is performed as event-based and in near real time.
The following steps are executed:
The process kicks off when configured fields are modified and saved on an item in System Application and Products (SAP).
Retrieve the attributes that have changed on the item in SAP.
This data is retrieved from one or more organizations (plants) as per site-org mappings or from the configured single organization.
3. Update the information into Agile.
The input consists of the item attribute values, which must be updated in Agile. Unique identifiers for the item, along with values for all the attributes mapped for transfer from ERP to Agile are provided as input.
In Agile 9.3.6 an item number is the only attribute that is required for uniquely identifying the item to be updated.
A unique item revision in Agile is composed of a revision number as well as a Change Order (CO) number (because it is possible for certain types of COs in Agile to revise an item without changing its revision number). In the context of integration, in most cases, updates to item attributes applies only to the latest released revision.
The following guidelines are followed when querying an item from Agile for update:
In this release of integration, developed on Agile 9.3.6, only the item number is used to query the item to be updated. The item number will pull up the latest released revision of the item by default, and all updates are made to the latest released revision of the item.
A future release of the integration should plan on enhancing this capability to accept a revision number (and optionally, a Change number) along with the item number to pull up a unique item revision for update (if a Change number is not specified, the latest released Change corresponding to that revision is assumed).
IA Update is performed either near real time or batch. In order to achieve this, implementation requires a one-time configuration of change pointers and Application Link Enabling (ALE) in SAP.
As part of this configuration, all the fields that must be updated back in to Agile are configured such that any changes saved to these fields on an item triggers the update process immediately. For the batch process, it is required to schedule the IDOC as a background job.
The moment you save the changes on the item in SAP, the change pointers configuration triggers an event. The event pushes the data to the configured partner (ALE configurations) and in this case it is the Agile system. All the changes made on the item are captured and updated on the specified item in Agile. This process triggers once for each item change save event.
Exceptions
In all cases, the exception message displayed must contain the item number that was being updated along with other supporting information as indicated.
Insufficient privilege to discover, read, or update the item are:
Invalid field value
Invalid list value
Invalid data format for text, money or date fields
Item does not exist
These are the solution assumptions for the process integration for IA Update:
If item information must be retrieved from multiple plants in the SAP (ERP) system, the following constraints must be met in order to support this process:
a. Agile multi-sites is configured
b. There is a one-to-one mapping between Agile sites and ERP plants
The attributes to be updated with ERP data are on the Sites tab of the item
In this release of integration "Changes are interfaced to only one destination system".
The following exception conditions are tested to make sure that they return user-friendly error messages. In all cases, the exception message displayed must contain the Item number that was being updated and the step at which the error occurred, along with other supporting information as needed.
Insufficient privilege to discover, read, or update attributes on the Item object
Invalid field value (indicate the field for which the value is incorrect, and the value that is being passed on to the field)
Item object does not exist
New Item Creation is not part of the scope for this Item Attribute Update activity. It is assumed that the item exists in both Agile and SAP, by means of a prior New Part Introduction or independent offline load processes.
This figure shows the sequence of events that occur during IA update:
This sequence diagram shows the process flow for IA update process flow:
This table describes the activities involved in the IA update process:
| # |
Activity | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | SAP Item Operational Attribute Update Action Trigger | SAP Item Operational Attribute Update Action trigger Invokes the UpdateItemListSAPReqABCS |
| 2 | UpdateItemListSAPReqABCS calls UpdateItemListSAPReqABCSImpl | UpdateItemListABM will be passed to UpdateItemListSAPReqABCSImpl as the input |
| 3 | UpdateItemListSAPReqABCSImpl invokes ItemEBS | An invoke activity in UpdateItemListSAPReqABCSImpl invokes the UpdateItemList operation on ItemEBS with UpdateItemListEBM as input |
| 4 | ItemEBS routes UpdateItemListEBM to UpdateItemListAgileProvABCSImpl | ItemEBS routes UpdateItemListEBM as input to UpdateItemListAgileProvABCSImpl |
| 5 | UpdateItemListAgileProvABCSImpl invokes Agile's Item Operational Attribute Update Web Service | UpdateItemListAgileProvABCSImpl transforms the UpdateItemListEBM to AgileUpdateItemListABM and invokes UpdateItem service operation on Agile Web Service to update Item cost related attribute information from SAP to Agile.
The AgileUpdateItemListResponseABM is returned back to UpdateItemListAgileProvABCSImpl |
The process integration for IA Update uses the following industry components:
Core Components for AIA Update
| EBOs | ItemEBO |
| EBMs | UpdateItemListEBM
UpdateItemListResponseEBM |
| EBSs | ItemEBS
ItemResponseEBS |
Core Components Locations
| EBO & EBM XSD files | $AIA_HOME/AIAMetaData/AIAComponents/EnterpriseObjectLibrary/Core/EBO/Item |
| WSDL files | $AIA_HOME/AIAMetaData/AIAComponents/EnterpriseBusinessServiceLibrary/Core/EBO/Item |
For detailed documentation of individual Enterprise Business Objects (EBOs), click EBO Name link on the Integration Scenario Summary page in the Oracle AIA Console. You can also use the Integration Scenario Summary page to search for and view integration scenarios that utilize a particular EBO or Enterprise Business Service (EBS).
EBOs can be extended, for instance, to add new data elements. These extensions are protected, and will remain intact after a patch or an upgrade.
For more information about EBOs and Enterprise Business Messages (EBMs), see Oracle Application Integration Architecture - Foundation Pack: Integration Developer's Guide, "Extensibility for AIA Artifacts."
This table lists the SAP and Agile components for IA updates:
| Services | SAP (Requester) | Agile (Provider) |
|---|---|---|
| ABMs | UpdateItemListABM | AgileUpdateListABM
AgileUpdateListResponseABM |
| ABCS | UpdateItemListSAPReqABCSImpl
UpdateItemListSAPReqABCS |
UpdateItemListAgileProvABCSImpl |
| EBS | ItemEBS | ItemResponseEBS |
Component Locations
| ABO XSD files | $AIA_HOME/AIAMetaData/AIAComponents/ApplicationObjectLibrary/Agile/V1/schemas |
These are the integration services for IA Update:
ItemEBS is the Enterprise Business Service, which exposes the operations related to the Item Attribute Update Integration on the ItemEBO. The following are the routing rules:
ItemEBS Mediator service
UpdateItemListSAPReqABCSImpl
Route UpdateItemListEBM to UpdateItemListAgileProvABCSImpl
UpdateItemListSAPReqABCSImpl is called when there is a requirenment to update multiple items in Agile with all the operational attributes as well as attributes such as unit cost from SAP. This is a push from SAP to the Agile.
The requester Application Business Connector Service (ABCS) is a synchronous process, which receives a list of Item Ids from the SAP Change Pointer program. The lists of Ids are those which have last_update_date greater than the last run date of the Change Pointer.
The requester Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) Composite filters the list of Ids that are present in the cross-reference tables in the Fusion Middleware (FMW) layer. This provides a list of Items that were actually from the Agile system. The original list of Item Ids may be those from non-Agile sources as well.
The BPEL Composite then makes a Mediator call for end point virtualization. This Mediator layer has a SAP Adapter, which calls the Business Application Programming Interface (BAPI) that provides the Item details required to be sent out. This is the Item Application Business Message (ABM).
A transformation converts the ABM to an Enterprise Business Message (EBM).
An asynchronous request-delayed response call is made to the ItemEBS with the ItemListEBM. This is routed to the appropriate provider.
The BPEL instance gets invoked when the asynchronous call gets back from the provider and provides the status of the transaction back to the caller concurrent program (since that is a synchronous call).
The concurrent program logs the status of this call.
UpdateItemListAgileProvABCSImpl is used to facilitate the communication between ItemEBS and the Agile web service used for updating the Items' operational attributes, item cost information in batch mode in Agile.
Receives UpdateItemListReqMsg that contains UpdateItemListEBM
Transform operation is called to convert the UpdateItemListEBM into AgileUpdateItemListABM.
AgileUpdateItemListABM is sent as input to the web service operation UpdateItems (Coarse Grained application programming interfaces (APIs) on Agile side) to update Items in Agile.
AgileUpdateItemListResponseABM is received on successful execution of Coarse Grained API.
Transform operation is called to convert the AgileUpdateItemListABM to UpdateItemListResponseEBM, which is returned as output of this BPEL Composite.
If the UpdateItems service operation fails on the Agile side, a new Fault is generated and is sent across with the appropriate error message.
These are the IA Update integration customization points:
SAP
| Property | Name | Description |
| UpdateItemListSAPReqABCSImpl | XFormABMToEBM_Custom.xsl | Custom transformations for Item Request ABM to Request EBM |
Agile
| Property | Name | Description |
| UpdateItemListAgileProvABCSImpl
(Agile update item attributes provider flow) |
AgileUpdateItemListResponseABM_to_UpdateItemListResponseEBM_Custom.xsl | RespABM to RespEBM (custom element) |
| AgileUpdateItemListResponseABM_to_UpdateItemListResponseEBM_Impl.xsl | RespABM to RespEBM (main) | |
| UpdateItemListEBM_to_AgileUpdateItemListABM_Impl.xsl | ReqEBM to ReqABM (main) |
