Happy new year IT world, so what my plans for the new year, in the last two weeks between celebrations and food I spent a lot of time studying new ways to integrate technologies, I like to call that my Integration Dojo, I like the idea to be able to integrate systems like SAP, AS400 or any other financial or manufacture framework in different ways.
For example we have different options today to get and send data to SAP, BizTalk SAP adapter for example, very simple to use and to configure, Microsoft has released a new adapter completely based on SAPNCO.dll component, configure the adapter is very easy and we know how much BizTalk Server is solid, I also like the idea to extend BizTalk Server to make easier and faster solving integration problems and I have a nice plan on it 😉
Other interesting option is the Microsoft Azure proposal with the Azure SAP connector, you can find different resources in internet, for example here or here, the approach is Cloud based but the possibility to extend the solution in on premise side is absolutely intriguing for me.
I started to have a look on SAP or what I like to call “the beast”, as I said in the last two weeks I started with a new project, I want to create a GrabCaster trigger able to integrate SAP in easy way, I start studying the SAPNCO dll and the internal libraries, honestly the hardest part to understand is the SAP side.
I integrated SAP many times using BizTalk Server but how to do that without it or without any kind of useful support?
SAP is quite complicate and cryptic, everything is working using “transactions”, WE20, SM59 and so on, so is quite complicate to switch between a Microsoft approach to using transaction SM58 to check errors and use WE19 to send data or… use transaction SMGW to check the active connections instead of using a Windows netstat command 🙂
I like to be smart and to use smart approaches to solve problems, for this reason I started the GrabCaster project, thank to it I’m exploring the dark side of integration and I’m learning a lot of interesting new things, in the first how to integrate technologies like SAP using what SAP is able to offer me only, I think that an integration expert or, what I like to call in a humorous manner an Integration Animal, should be able to solve integration problems using different approaches and technologies, I don’t like the idea to depend by a technology to integrate another one.
Another interesting aspect that I’m going to cover is how to use and extend technologies like BizTalk Server and Azure to solve Integration problem in very easy way, I see a lot of potential using Azure API like dynamic custom connectors or using new approaches and patterns in BizTalk Server.
I’m preparing the session for my next event and I want to do something real practical, what I like to define, zero slides, total experience, maximum value for the attendees.
I will keep notes about my progress in my blog and I will use it like a “personal notes area” or better my personal “Integration Dojo” 🙂 , I think this is the best way to share great content creating useful documentation for my projects too.
Keep in touch and feel free to contact me for any question or collaboration in the projects 🙂
