​What options are there to provide facade to HCM data through SAP PO for third party external app?

[egor_malov]

Dear colleagues,

My question is about SAP HR/HCM and SAP PO. I have some experience with HR ALE integration, but know very little about PO. Sorry if my question is trivial, or if my terminology is far from perfect.

So, there is a SAP landscape with SAP HCM system and SAP PO setup. SAP HCM data are posted to PO to provide HCM data to all possible subscribers.

And there is a third party app (non SAP) that would like to get HCM data in simplified form that is:

- only O, S, P otypes

- relationships are needed, but not all of them (O-O-S-P)

- only limited infotypes/fields

- only current data( no historical data)

- if possible, in aggregated form i.e. one simple record per person, org unit( and not a bunch of infotypes).

It should be possible to receive changes( based on change pointers, so, not only full data load as in PFAL ).

The only solution that is considered now is to push HCM data in full into the app, and the app to do all the rest (aggregation, etc).

I don't think it's right, because I find these data too 'raw', too detailed to bring it out of the SAP landscape. It feels like breaking the encapsulation in terms of OOP .

Also the logic of the app has to duplicate SAP standard logic of 'deserializing' HR data from HR Idoc. Feels just too complex and error prone. Just imagine those cumbersome cases when relationship between objects 1 and 2 arrive first in IDOC 1, and the objects themselves arrive later in another IDOC!

My question is - is this approach really the only one? What would be a typical solution for this case?

Thank you In advance

[TomXing · Accepted solution]

Hi Egor,

I'm not sure if below info is going to hit your pain points.
I assume your scenario looks like SAP HCM (IDoc) -> SAP PO -> 3rd party app (in whatever format/method).

- SAP PO can adapt data with adapters (e.g., from plain IDoc to JSON)
- SAP PO can also process the data with mapping (e.g., concatenate some fields, extract some data, or even more complexed logics using your own Java code)
- SAP PO itself is not supposed to STORE any data (for future use). But you can use other storages (File, JDBC, etc). This may not be relevant to your question though.

Best regards,
Tom

[egor_malov · Accepted solution]

Tom, thank you, the picture is definitely getting clearer for me! I think I should dig into mapping now.

[TomXing · Accepted solution]

Thanks Egor. In this case please mark the answer as correct or helpful.