Using the SAP event pattern

A typical scenario in IBM® BPM for SAP includes transferring the details of an SAP business object to an SAP event and then triggering other actions in IBM BPM. To achieve this scenario, many authoring and configuration steps are required. Integration Designer provides an SAP event pattern that bridges this gap and facilitates the receipt of message events from SAP modules based on existing SCA interfaces.

About this task

The SAP event pattern in Integration Designer is called Event Implementation and provides a built-in method to integrate SAP and IBM BPM processes.

Patterns can be accessed through Integration Designer Patterns Explorer, where you can create an integration solution for common scenarios. At a high level, the following steps occur in the event implementation process:

1. Configure and connect SAP ECC to IBM BPM so that the event pattern can receive events from SAP.
2. The event pattern itself automatically builds an event pattern instance in Integration Designer.
3. Use the event pattern protocol to configure the IBM BPM process and make it ready to receive data from the event pattern.

The SAP event instance provides the following key components:

• An inbound adapter that receives the business object that corresponds to the SAP event. The business object contains the details of the SAP business object in the SAP event.
• An implementation to map the event information to the input of the SCA interface through a BPEL process
• An SCA interface is invoked to trigger the IBM BPM process.

The following procedure is provided as an example where the SAP event pattern is used to create an order for an IBM BPM process. To use the Event Implementation pattern to retrieve the order information from SAP, complete the following steps.

1. In IBM Process Designer, open the BPD that you want to work with.
2. Define the business object for the inbound event. The business object must include the correlation information and any additional data that is required for the SAP event.
3. In the Variables tab of the BPD, define a private variable that will be used as a correlation variable for the inbound event. In the variable properties, under Process Identification, select Variable is used as a Process Instance Identifier.
4. For the inbound event from SAP, specify the implementation details.
   1. In the implementation properties of the intermediate event, under Message Trigger, set the Triggering Mechanism to SCA Service.
   2. For the Message Object Type, select the business object that contains the correlation ID and data.
5. Bring the process application that you have defined to Integration Designer. In the Patterns Explorer, under Pattern Encapsulation, a new event pattern called Event Implementation is displayed.
6. For the selected Event Implementation pattern, specify the following interface elements.
   • SCA interface defined in the project: Select the SCA interface that is defined in the process to be integrated. The system triggers it when the SAP event arrives.
   • SAP event inbound interface: Select the SAP inbound service that is used to link to SAP and receive SAP events.
   • Implementation module: Select the implementation module to which the pattern is applied.
7. After applying the pattern, the SAP event module is implemented with a BPEL component that is created to handle the inbound SAP event.
8. In the diagram for the BPEL component, click the data map module and configure the data mapping to finish the implementation. For example, you can configure bussinessobjecttype, eventkey, typeoftriggeringobject, and leave the values for eventtype and objectid empty.
9. Save the changes and run the process. At run time, an SAP event occurs. In Process Portal, a sales order is created and is listed under My Tasks.
10. Click the step to display event information such as the event type, business object type, and object ID.