Streamline Your Governance Processes with an Interface Repository

by Michal Krawczyk, SAP Integration Consultant, BCC, Poland (November 2008)

Use this guide to create an interface repository with Solution Manager. With an interface repository, you can document all interfaces in your company's landscape in one place.

Categories: Administration, Business Process Management, Monitoring, Solution Manager

Key Concept

An interface repository provides runtime information about all message flows across company application systems. It includes not only sender and receiver system names, but also more specific information such as the technologies used to send and receive data, routings, message splits, and message collections. An interface repository can also store information used in Service Level Agreements (such as maximum interface downtime), or even about roles of communication used in application systems for interface governance reasons.

Have you ever wanted a repository where you could track all your company’s interfaces in just one place? Who hasn’t? The problem is that until recently it wasn’t possible to create a true interface repository. Fortunately, with Service Pack 15 for SAP Solution Manager 7.0, you now have the option of creating Interface Scenario objects for all objects in the solution landscape.

These Interface Scenario objects allow you to document not only all of the cross-system flows, but also different technologies with respective attributes used for data transfer between application components such as EDI, ALE, or all known XI adapters (for SAP NetWeaver Process Integration [PI]). This is particularly useful for companies who need to keep track of all their interfaces for governance purposes.

Interface Scenario objects provide a new way to document all existing interfaces for the whole system landscape in one place. Previously, companies had all of those interfaces described in Excel files, on special pages in intranet portals, or in middleware tools. Those approaches are not the ideal solutions for at least two reasons:

Instead of having one place that described all of the interfaces, most companies have multiple Excel files with interfaces in many different places. Each module or process using the interfaces needs its own Excel file.
Some middleware tools, such as SAP NetWeaver PI, offer a way to document interface flows. However, some interfaces do not use middleware. Some lookups or flows, for example, cannot use middleware for performance reasons. How then can you document something in the middleware that does not use it? The answer is you can’t.

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