It's My Birthday And I Can Write What I Want To ...
It's my birthday and I'm treating myself to a little writing for the pure joy of writing. Call it a contemplation of life, stuff, and a couple of transformations. And oh yeah ... the title is sung to the tune of Leslie Gore's long-ago hit "It's My Party". Mar. 11, 2010
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Putting Together The Pieces Of Our Bank Remittance Integration Approach
Integration thinking in action in our series on a bank remittance interface: now that we have our catalog of integration objects we can put them together to see how they fit to form a generic process to handle all of our current and future payment interfaces.  Mar. 1, 2010
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Bank Payment Interfaces: The Pieces Of Our Plug'n'Play Puzzle
In our last posting we considered the stuff that we already have as the starting point for our integration architecture. It's time now to look at the objects that we'll create to develop our generic approach to B2B and internal systems integration.  Feb. 12, 2010
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Bank Payment Interfaces: Considering What We Have Is How We Begin
We've noted that integration thinking is the ability to conceive and develop a seamless and generic plug and play approach to B2B and internal systems integration based on the tools available in our organization. We're now ready to define the pieces that we'll need to build our banking interface. Feb. 1, 2010
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Bank Payment Interfaces: A Practical Approach to Integration Thinking
We've discussed integration thinking as the ability to look at all the tools available in our organization and consider how we could use them to build a seamless, generic, plug and play approach to business partner and systems integration. We will now examine how this philosophy can be applied to build payment remittance interfaces to any number of banks from SAP through Sterling Integrator. Jan. 25, 2010
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My Brain On Integration: Multi-system Interface Development
While developing a series of bank payment interfaces in SAP and Sterling Integrator I consider the interesting challenges of working with different systems, programming languages, and communications protocols to produce an integration architecture that fulfills a critical business requirement. Jan. 18, 2010
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EDI With a German Accent: A Brief Tour of VDA
We continue our series about EDI and IDoc message standards with a look at VDA, which predates the global UN/EDIFACT standard and will eventually be replaced by it, but which is still being used by some major EDI consumers in the German auto industry. Jan. 8, 2010
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It's a New Year and I'm Counting my Blessings
A quick break from my current series on EDI messages and transactions and IDocs to count my blessings from 2009 and to wish the SDN community a healthy and happy 2010. Dec. 30, 2009
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Standards Make the EDI World Go Around
Continuing my on-going series on EDI and IDoc message standards, we begin a look at some of the second-tier standards that are still in use today. In our current episode, we'll focus on ODETTE, a pan-European organization that maintains data transmission and EDI standards for the auto industry. Dec. 7, 2009
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An Ode to SAP from the Darkest Days of a Successful Project
While digesting my Thanksgiving feast and fighting the urge to fall asleep, I thought I'd have a little fun with this posting. I'll return to my series on EDI and IDoc message standards in a few days. Happy Thanksgiving to all my American family, friends, and colleagues and a happy holiday season to all wherever you may be and whatever you may celebrate. Nov. 27, 2009
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Messages, EDI, and SAP: More Than Just Data Vessels
Welcome to the first of a series of blog postings about messages and message standards in EDI and SAP. Join me as I cover the basics of the key message standards used in EDI in an SAP environment including EDIFACT, X12, and IDocs. So stay tuned ... and I hope you enjoy the ride. Nov. 16, 2009
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A Love of Jazz and the Data Dictionary
An improvised blog riff on jazz, the SAP data dictionary, and just a few of my favorite things. Nov. 9, 2009
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Documenting an Unfolding Story: Blogging, SCN, and Community
Knowledge sharing through blogging is an on-going process of exploration and discovery. Building a community like SCN is an unfolding story written by each of its participants everyday. This is just one paragraph of that story. Nov. 2, 2009
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Coding the STATUS IDoc Delete One-Step
Part 2 of KISS Those STATUS IDocs Goodbye. Coding a one-step STATUS IDoc delete that also cleans out all associated work flow items is as simple as stringing together a few SAP standard function modules. Oct. 26, 2009
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KISS Those STATUS IDocs Goodbye, Part 1
A simple one-step solution to cleaning up IDoc records and workflow items generated by a successful STATUS IDoc interface.  Oct. 19, 2009
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Mapping IDocs to X12 Transactions and EDIFACT Messages
It's an inexact science perhaps but we can provide a base cross-reference between SAP IDocs and X12 transactions and EDIFACT messages. Oct. 12, 2009
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A Sneak Peak at my New Book from SAP Press
Leafing through a sample chapter from my new SAP Press book "Architecting EDI with SAP IDocs" Oct. 7, 2009
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Basic Requirements for an EDI System in an SAP Environment
Seven basic requirements that I consider critical in selecting an EDI subsystem. Sep. 30, 2009
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"Classic" EDI is Here to Stay ... And I'm Here to Write About It
EDI is still by far the most widely used form of B2B e-commerce in the world today, carrying trillions of dollars worth of transactions every year. My new SDN blog aims to deal with real-world EDI issues and solutions in SAP and I look forward to hearing from readers with their questions and problems. Sep. 18, 2009
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