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Member	Matt.Austin-NationalOfficeFurniture - 10/17/2013 7:12:47 AM Service Bus file import? I am just starting to look at importing data into Kentico. We want to export account details from our SAP system and import them into Kentico acocunt database. Is it possible to use the service bus to pickup a file from a file server and use that to update / create an account in the CMS?

Kentico Legend

Brenden Kehren - 10/17/2013 7:43:40 AM

RE:Service Bus file import?

Will this be a one-time dump of data? Will it be a one-way or two-way update between Kentico and SAP? What should happen if the process fails?

You have a few options you can go with. If a one-time dump, use the Kentico Import Toolkit (KIT). Pretty easy and powerful tool.

If you need a simple solution with some general error handling use a custom Scheduled Task. Scheduled tasks can be very robust and work great for data transfers and other actions on your Kentico installation.

If you need some real-time synchronization (one or two way) with robust error handling, look into using the Integration Bus. While it is a bit more time consuming to get this implemented, it offers many options a simple scheduled task does not.

There is always the option of doing something outside of Kentico as well and using the Kentico API.

Good luck,
Brenden

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Matt.Austin-NationalOfficeFurniture - 10/17/2013 3:09:57 PM

RE:Service Bus file import?

Thanks for the orienation Brenden. This will be a one-way update from SAP to Kentico, running on a regular (1/day) schedule.

It looks like the Kentico Import Toolkit is the type of integration I was thinking about, but with the scheduling and error handling of a scheduled task.

I was hoping to avoid writting custom code to update a standard object.

The other option I would have, I guess, is update the SQL table directly.

We also use Microsoft Biztalk Server as a middleware, are there any cases of folks using biztalk to integrate with Kentico?

Kentico Legend

Brenden Kehren - 10/17/2013 4:13:22 PM

RE:Service Bus file import?

Not 100% sure but I'm guessing there are other Kentico Partners out there who have integrated with SAP and possibly BizTalk.

From what you're describing the scheduled task would be a pretty simple task to setup. One thing I've done is within Kentico if I have any custom tables I'm importing into, I name the columns the same as the source table. This way I can simply map name for name dynamically based on the table definition (stored in XML) and not worry about having to filter out any additional manually. Works very slick and only takes about 30 lines of code.

I'd highly recommend staying away from updating any SQL table directly. There is an API for a good reason and you could have some very unexpected results if you go directly to the table for anything other than a SELECT statement.

You can use the KIT from command line as long as you have a profile file setup already. This might be worth looking into as well.