BizTalk 2006 R2 with PeopleSoft Integration & MicroSoft BizTalk PeopleSoft Adapter Overview

Introduction

Recently, I come across a requirement to integrate PeopleSoft ERP implementation within an existing ESB. I have worked on many PeopleSoft integrations through BizTalk, so I am just taking an opportunity to write something exciting about the knowledge I have gathered.

Microsoft is very much aware about the importance of PeopleSoft ERP and its huge existence in the Industry, so BizTalk R2 LOB adapter set has included PeopleSoft adapter which is a very useful artifact during our PeopleSoft integration. It helps the developer in many ways like developing schemas, messages. There are few limitations too that we face with the adapter but those limitations could be overseen with different kind of implementation patterns and of course we can achieve most of the requirements that we want to with the adapter. There are also many third party adapters available for PeopleSoft integration but I have explored more, the only one third party adapter I have worked with was iWay last year. Yes it is very impressive, but while comparing the overall prospective I would definitely go with R2 LOB. But it purely depends on the requirement and what extent we are looking for to integrate the systems.

Microsoft Line of Business PeopleSoft Adapter's Architecture.

LOB PeopleSoft Adapter's Prerequisites

• The Java 2 Platform must be installed on the BizTalk Server that the BizTalk Adapter for PeopleSoft Enterprise is running on.
• The PeopleSoft Java Object Adapter JAR file, psjoa.jar should be copied to a folder that is accessible to the BizTalk Server that the BizTalk Adapter for PeopleSoft Enterprise is running on.

Implementation & Design Patterns

BizTalk PeopleSoft adapter facilitates your requirement to query and receive data from PeopleSoft ERP, also you can do basic data operation like Insert, Update and Delete. But here one thing is very clear, it will not allow live integration from outbound direction (from PeopleSoft). To achieve such a requirement, you can implement services inside PeopleSoft which can push live data feed into any queue or physical location where BizTalk or any external service can monitor feeds with very less latency, so how can you get such live implementation.

I would like to share the architecture I designed for such live implementation landscape recently. You can view the image below:

I designed the above architecture for the two-way integration with PeopleSoft. Low latency outbound messaging integration can be achieved by MSMQ or any other queuing implementation between BizTalk and PeopleSoft. Also many times in different scenario requirements, we need information integration between different systems that could be achieved through cutting edge technology like WCF / WSE 2.0 where BizTalk R2 provides functionality to integrate such services. You can also give a term like 'EII' to such an implementation. Moreover, by implementing such a landscape, we are moving towards service orientation and service bus. BizTalk provides an ease to integrate many systems within such implementation, also it leverages extensibility of ERP implementation.

You can also go through the below links for further references at MSDN:

1. Tutorial: Using the BizTalk Adapter for PeopleSoft Enterprise to Retrieve Data from PeopleSoft Enterprise
2. Tutorial: Using the BizTalk Adapter for PeopleSoft Enterprise to Write Data to PeopleSoft Enterprise

Please provide your valuable feedback by emailing me at nilayparikh@gmail.com.

Please find more articles on BizTalk and Enterprise Integration at my private blog: http://biztalk-ssis-ssas.blogspot.com/.

History

• 30^th March, 2008: Initial post