Can XI be used in BW to load flat files (Excel based)? What are the advantages/ disadvantages of this? Also, what other areas of BW can XI be used in in BW release 3.5?
Requires Free Membership to View
When you register, you will start receiving targeted emails from my award-winning team of editorial writers. Our goal is to keep you informed on the hottest topics and biggest challenges faced by SAP professionals today.
Hannah Smalltree, Editorial Director
Yes, it could. But it is not designed to do this. The easiest way to load a flat file is to use the GUI_UPLOAD function or the MULTIPART MIME feature of the BSP (HTMLB:file). XI should be used if and only if all data exchange traffic is routed through the middleware.
Mind that XI is nothing other than another instance of WebAS, so the underlying engine is the same as the one used in BW. XI is helpful if you can use some predefined adapters, but this wont be the case for Excel files. Please also mind, that the upload should be done from Excel CSV file format only, rather than the Excel generic binary format.
This was first published in February 2005