Real Time Information Director User Documentation

RTID Extensibility

Hewlett-Packard Company 4 529618 - 001

Guidelines for Analyzing Mapping Requirements

Think about a mapping as the answer to this question: From what element of the

incoming XML document do I insert data into a specific database column? The same

mapping is used in the reverse process, creating an XML document from the database.

The Director explicitly supports two kinds of documents. A native format document is

one in which XML segments and elements correspond exactly to records and columns in

the database. In this case, any mapping from an external format, such as Health Level 7,

and the format of the data store occurs in an EAI integration server such as SeeBeyond

e*Gate. An IDoc is an SAP intermediate document; you use format metadata to map

data elements in an IDoc to columns in the data store.

Typically the process for defining an appropriate mapping includes the following steps:

• Business analysts decide what data must be stored in the database tables.

• SAP analysts generate IDocs that contain the relevant data. Sometimes these

IDocs contain custom elements, depending on the business requirements of the

SAP source system.

• Business analysts and SAP analysts define how to map a column to an XML

element, including the use of custom elements.

To understand the mapping for a given SAP system, it is very useful to obtain sample

IDocs, especially if they contain custom elements. Use the sample IDocs to analyze the

following:

• How XML segments and elements map to database tables and columns

• What XML segment or element triggers a row to be inserted in a table

• How XML segments are related hierarchically (nested)

• How many times a child segment can occur within the parent segment

(cardinality).

Consider the following XML data sample:

</ZEEDP20>

</E1EDP20>