Posted by Kevin Kane, Senior Consultant at GP Strategies
It seems more and more customers are choosing SAP Cloud Platform Integration (SCPI) as an alternative to Dell Boomi for integration between SAP ERP and SuccessFactors Employee Central. This presents integration consultants in the space with the opportunity to learn a new technology. Unsurprisingly, developers with Boomi experience will recognize commonalities within SCPI at a high level but will find differences up close. Let’s quickly compare the two.
3 Key Differences
Structure Mapping
SCPI funnels everything toward XML. Mapping between XML and CSV, a common scenario for EC customers, is a multi-step process in SCPI. Instead of putting an XML profile and a CSV profile on opposite sides of a mapping in Boomi, SCPI requires an XML-to-XML mapping and then a separate step to convert from XML to CSV.
Versioning
This is one key difference between SCPI and Boomi. In Boomi, every time the user saves a change to a process, a new version is generated that can be viewed or reverted. In SCPI, however, artifacts have buttons for “Save” as well as “Save as version.” Distinguishing between saving and version generation has the obvious drawback of making it difficult to revert to just the right version. However, for users who are constantly saving (never a bad idea), the upshot is that the user has the option to keep a cleaner history with only essential versions.
Click-and-Drag Method
The SCPI interface has some UI quirks that distinguish it from Boomi. Boomi’s click-and-drag method of placing components into a process can prove to be a hard habit to unlearn when moving to SCPI’s click-and-click method. While this example is hopefully an easy “day one” takeaway for new SCPI users, it’s representative of several simple differences that can prove time-consuming for those coming from a Boomi background.
2 Similarities
Field Mapping
Other than SCPI’s bias toward XML, individual field mapping is similar on the two platforms. SCPI has a different layout for working on one field mapping at a time while still seeing the larger picture, but the differences are more cosmetic than fundamental.
Scripting
Boomi developers versed in Groovy script will be pleased to find that it’s also supported in SCPI. The SCPI web UI doesn’t always handle syntax issues gracefully, so you may want to copy/paste from a text editor to avoid losing work when you’re making changes.
All in all, SCPI and Boomi are similar enough for Boomi developers to transition to the newer platform pretty quickly. Hopefully seeing a rundown of some similarities and differences will give you the confidence to take a swing at it.
For questions or a more in depth explanation, please contact me at kkane1@gpstrategies.com.
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