6.3. ERP Sector Use-Case
Two leading suppliers of Supply Chain Planning systems are using ETL’s Transformation Manager (TM) to assist with Supply Chain Integration. These systems operate with the many Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems in use today (refer Error! Reference source not found.) and each ERP System has its own recommended integration approach.
ETL are rapidly encountering the main ERP systems in use today. Some of these, such as Baan®, are relatively straightforward to access using web service standard database access. Others, such as SAP®, are traditionally more difficult to access. For those that are a little more difficult to access, ETL are developing techniques and creating TM custom adapters.
Gaining access to the data is crucial. Each company’s integration requirement is then primarily simply an understanding of the business data flows. Once these are understood, the business supply chain integration can be easily implemented as TM transforms. ETL’s business partnerships with specialist suppliers of Supply Chain Planning systems ensure that the supply chain data can be easily accessed. Planning activities, such as demand, replenishment and production, can be undertaken and planning requirements returned to the supply chain ERP systems.
For systems which are often seen as difficult to access, such as SAP, ETL have developed a TM SAP adapter, which fully implements SAP’s recommended integration approach for Java applications, supports all of the SAP interface types available and can handle both synchronous and asynchronous calls in either direction. TM SAP adapter passes input and output parameters as XML documents and these are created and read respectively by TM Transforms.
The SAP interface meta-data XSD (send or receive messages) is easily loaded into TM Design Tool. In addition, the TM SAP adapter is also able to read SAP ‘help values’ from a SAP server and store these as part of the model constraints. All details of the model are visible and accessible - elements and attributes, relationships, attribute types, cardinality, mandatory values, documentation and help values - to assist with the design of transforms.
