System Landscape Directory(SLD) in SAP Exchange Infrastructure

 

The SAP System Landscape Directory (SLD) is the central information provider in a system landscape.

The SLD contains two types of information:

·        Component Information: This is information about all available SAP products and components, including their versions. If there are any third-party products in the system landscape, they are also registered here.

At design time of the integration objects, the component information is extracted from the SLD to define integration scenarios.

·        Landscape Description: This contains all installed systems in a system landscape.

When a collaborative business process is configured, the landscape descriptions are needed to determine the system information of the business partners involved.

SAP recommends that you use one SLD.

If you have more than one SLD instance, you must ensure that all content is synchronized. The SLD has export and import functions for this purpose.

 

 

Integration

To be able to address business systems as senders or receivers of messages during configuration, you must first have defined them as services in the Integration Directory.

The runtime environment of SAP Exchange Infrastructure sends the address of the Integration Server of a business system to the SLD.

·        Business systems are logical systems that communicate with each other within SAP Exchange Infrastructure by sending and receiving messages. They can be SAP or third-party systems.

¡        An SAP system has one or more clients that function independently of each other as logical units at runtime. Each of these clients represents a business system in SAP Exchange Infrastructure.

¡        A third-party system is also a logical unit that functions as a sender or receiver. Therefore, third-party systems are also business systems in this sense.

·        An Integration Server enables communication between business systems at runtime. It cannot execute business logic.

You can assign a group of business systems to an Integration Server. A business system group is a logical grouping of business systems that use an Integration Server to communicate with each other.

Changes in the SLD

After you have made any changes in the SLD, always ensure that you clear the SLD cache in the Integration Directory/Integration Repository. Only once you have done so can you access up-to-date SLD content

Example of Changes in the SLD

Change in the SLD	Effect in the Integration Directory/Integration Repository
Create/delete a business system	Integration Directory: The input help for business systems (for example, when you define a business system service) is only updated once you clear the SLD cache.
Delete an Adapter Engine	Integration Directory: The input help for Adapter Engines in the communication channel is only updated once you clear the SLD cache.

In the following cases, ensuring that a change made in the SLD has also taken effect in the Integration Repository/Directory requires manual effort.

Changes in SLD and Additional Activities in the Integration Builder

Change in the SLD	Effect in the Integration Directory/Integration Repository
Change a product or a main instance	Integration Repository: For this change to take effect in all integration scenarios that use the product or main instance, you must update the application components.
Change a business system (registered as an SAP or Non-SAP) system	Integration Directory: For this change to take effect in the relevant business system service, you must compare the data with the SLD .
Change a business system (adapter-specific identifiers, for example, the logical system)	Integration Directory: For this change to take effect in the relevant business system service, you must compare the data with the SLD .