PeopleSoft SCM Outbound EIPs
Outbound EIPs exist throughout the PeopleSoft system, providing interface points for third-party applications requiring information as activity occurs within the PeopleSoft system. Most of these integrations utilize PeopleSoft Integration Broker technology to format and send industry standard XML service operations. For example, as item master information is entered into PeopleSoft applications, the system uses XML-based service operations to notify third-party systems enabling them to use this information to maintain their own item master tables.
PeopleSoft SCM applications as well as interacting third-party systems have various processing and timing requirements that dictate when information can be generated or received. For this reason, the integration points provided by PeopleSoft utilize a number of different approaches when generating outbound service operations.
For example, a third-party system requiring item master information from the PeopleSoft Inventory application may want immediate incremental updates as information is changed online, or may want periodic updates on a nightly or weekly basis. The Item Master EIP provides both options, giving the third-party system the choice as to how it wants to receive this information.
Component or Incremental Publish
The system generates an incremental transaction immediately upon saving a component in various PeopleSoft applications. Components used to maintain information such as items or customers utilize the Component Publish approach.
Batch Publish
This diagram illustrates the batch publish process flow for outbound transactions. The Batch Publish Rules page is used to activate the batch publish rule for the service operations using the batch publish utility. Once PeopleSoft applications place transactions into the outbound staging tables, the Publish Outbound Message process retrieves the transaction data and calls the Batch Publish Utility to create XML or flat files for the receiving system:
This diagram illustrates the batch publish process flow for outbound transactions
The Integration Broker enables grouping many like transactions into a single service operation. Background processes that work on batches of transactions at one time utilize this approach.
In addition, other processes use this approach where interface requirements demand various groupings of like transactions based on common information within each transaction. For example, an Advanced Shipping Notice service operation can be sent to a customer when the customer's order is shipped within the PeopleSoft Inventory system. This transaction may go directly to the customer or it may go through third-party software that converts the XML to one of the industry standard EDI formats, such as X.12, before passing it on to the customer. Using the options available with the Batch Publish approach, users can dictate whether to create a single service operation for all customers to send to the third-party software or create individual service operations to send directly to each customer.
PeopleSoft SCM applications all use the Publish Outbound Message process to initiate the Batch Publish of outbound EIPs. Built into this routine is the Batch Publish utility, a common PeopleSoft tool that provides the functionality to group and filter or chunk transactions as noted in the previous example.
The Batch Publish utility also provides the option to create flat files instead of XML-based output, when file layout objects exist for transactions being generated. File layout objects are easy to modify, and PeopleSoft provides examples for all transactions included in the EDI feature.
Full Data Replication
Full data replication is the process used to seed, or initially populate or repopulate, a copy of an entire table onto a remote database or legacy system. The entire contents of the table are published to all systems that require a copy of the table. Generally, full data replication occurs with setup tables, or, relatively static, low volume tables keyed by SetID.
Once a copy of the table exists, incremental updates provide a mechanism or process to keep the copy up-to-date with changes made on the master. Incremental updates occur most often with transaction tables, or frequently updated tables keyed by business unit.
Most full data replication service operation names end in _FULLSYNC.