Andreas Seifried
The MDM Enrichment Controller makes use of 3rd party or custom developed adapters to integrate information from external services into an MDM master data repository.
Through the administrative user interface of the controller, it is possible to test such adapters and their connectivity to the external service. This offers the advantage to
* Perform initial smoke tests of a recently installed 3rd party adapter based on standardized test data, which may be delivered by the provider.
* Test the adapter during development including and its communication with the controller and the external service without the actual need of having the complete MDM stack installed on the developer's workplace
* Manually test the availability of the external service in production without touching live data in the MDM repository
Besides this test environment, SAP additionally delivers a simulation environment that consists of
* An MDM repository containing example workflows and prepared configuration settings
* Sample adapters for testing and education
* Source code of the adapter implementations
* XML documents and schemas
* MDM import and syndication maps
You can use the simulation environment to study the complete request and response cycle form end to end, including the call to a Web service. Since the source code of the adapters is also included, you can use it for education or as a starting point for your own adapter development.
The remainder of this blog briefly explains how to setup the simulation environment and use the test environment with the contained adapters. It is assumed, that you already have deployed the MDM Enrichment Controller on the application server.
The complete procedure is described in the documentation on the SAP Help Portal at http://help.sap.com/saphelp_mdm550/helpdata/en/index.htm
-> MDM Enrichment Architecture
-> Configuring the MDM Enrichment Architecture
-> Setting up an Enrichment Simulation Environment.
Since the sample adapters and the respective Web service are deployed together with the MDM Enrichment Controller, there are basically only two things to do in order to use them in the test environment:
* Using the J2EE Visual Administrator, configure the Web service destination to point to the server where the MDM test Web service was deployed. This is typically the local server or "localhost".
* Include the reference to the adapters in the configuration file of the MDM Enrichment Controller. Since this can only be done within a configuration section of a repository, it makes sense to use the values for the delivery example repository, even if you do not have MDM installed right now. In such a case just use arbitrary settings for the connection details to the MDM server, such as localhost for the host names as in the example below. (Note: Most of it can be copied out of the documentation.)
Destination service in visual admin
Both steps are described in the previously mentioned documentation.
Now you are ready to access the test environment via the admin UI of the MDM Enrichment Controller. See my other blog on the MDM Enrichment Controller Admin UI on how to open this.
MDM Enrichment Controller Admin UI
The link Test Enrichment Provider System brings you to the test environment, where you can now select out of the example adapters (AddressEnrichmentSimulator on the screenshot below) and select an XML file that is fed into the adapter. Together with the MDM Enrichment Controller, SAP ships a file named EC_Simulator.zip. In this file you find XML schemas and example files that are accepted by the example adapters. For instance, you need to feed the file AddressSimulatorOutSample.xml into the chosen adapter as shown in the screenshot.
MDM Enrichment Controller - Test Environment
Content of the sample XML:
After clicking on Test, you can download the XML response of the adapter.
Test result
Content of the response:
As you see it is possible to perform this test without initiating the enrichment process from the MDM Data Manager and even without having actually the MDM Server installed. This makes the test environment very valuable during the development phase of an enrichment adapter.
SAP TechEd '07: Come see me speak!
If you are interested in more details about the MDM Enrichment Architecture: I will speak at SAP TechEd in Munich. You can attend there my session MDM350, which explains in detail how to develop and integrate an enrichment adapter.
Cheers,
Andreas
Andreas Seifried is a Product Manager for SAP NetWeaver Master Data Management.
How to use the test environment of the MDM Enrichment Controller
Andreas Seifried
