Real Time Information Director User Documentation

Technical Overview of the Real Time Information Director
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Director Document Handling
The Director maps the content of incoming documents to an SQL/MX Data Store and
retrieves, from that Data Store, the content required for outgoing documents. The
Director object classes that perform the SQL statements and transactions are called
Document Handlers:
• An update document handler stores segments and fields from an incoming
XML message in the corresponding rows and columns in the Data Store.
Different types of update document handlers exist for different types of
insertions and updates.
• A query document handler retrieves records and columns from the Data Store
to populate the segments and fields of an outgoing XML message, for instance a
query response.
In the context of a supply-chain solution, the Director also maps between the SAP IDoc
format used by a source system and the format of the RTSC data store.
A solution designer uses a text editor or Java development environment to define the
input and output documents required by the solution. A document definition includes
one or two kinds of metadata:
• Content metadata. This metadata is required for all documents. The Director
uses it to create and execute prepared SQL statements that delete old records and
insert new ones related to an XML message. The metadata describes
relationships among tables and associations among records in multiple tables. For
an incoming message that is not an SAP IDoc, the metadata is also used to map
the incoming data to rows and columns in the Data Store.
• Format metadata. This metadata is used only for processing SAP IDocs. It
specifies, for each XML tag in an IDoc, the column in the Data Store where the
data will be stored. Just as the XML document can contain nested segments (each
containing one or more fields, or elements), the metadata language provides for
many levels of nesting. The metadata language also supports “flattening”
incoming data to store fields from multiple segments in the same database record.
Format and content metadata have the same “look and feel”. Each metadata item is
expressed as a Java constructor with the set of parameters that specific constructor
requires. The metadata literally consists of new statements nested in brackets and braces
to match the hierarchy of the data in a message.
Metadata can specify various kinds of “enrichments” of the data, for example:
• To generate a unique key for a record
• To convert between external identifiers (e.g., a customer name) and internal
identifiers used within the Data Store