Apache Kafka is a popular open source project for processing event-driven data streams based on a transaction log.

Our adapter enables you to connect your SAP system landscape to Kafka on Premise or on SAP BTP in a simple an real world use case proven way. The product is the logical successor of our Kafka adapter for SAP Process Orchestration.

Basic functions

The adapter allows you to publish Iflow messages as Kafka records and subscribe Kafka records as Iflow messages.

Kafka key, headers and data sections are translated into iflow message parts and vice versa. Topic & Partitions and technical reliability settings (Ack Mode/Consumer commits) are customizable per use case.

Message processing is observable and debuggable on channel & message log level without third party tooling fully integrated into SAP Cloud integration functionality.

Work secure with company & compliance standards

Our product supports all  commonly used security standards PLAIN, PLAIN_SASL, SASL_SSL, SASL-Plain/SASL-SCRAM, OAuth2 as well as client certificate authentication for broker and schema registry connections. For End 2 End Encryption of selected fields or the whole payload the adpater suppors CSFLE (client side field encryption) and CSPE (client side payload encryption)

Support for hight perfomance, resilience & flow control

Stay in charge what you want to process of a topic and how you will put load on your connected backends.

The product supports different methods to allow, filter and control message throughput on topics through:

• Filtering: Kafka records can be filtered based on record headers, keys and data content before triggering an integration
• Batching: A set of n Kafka records can be batched as single iflow message to optimize throughput
• Polling & Record count/ time unit can be adjusted to control the exact amount of messages per period of time

Full control of operations in one tool

• Process records from start or end of stream or from any arbitrary position of the stream.
• Process and re-process records
• Deduplicate of necessary by offset or functional headers
• Group names are feely definable and not set by us as vendor

Automated or manual error resolution

One common „challenge“ with ordered streaming systems like Kafka is, if errors occur, this could bring a total halt to processing if order is important. Our product allows you a manual as well as automated way to handle by e.g. forwarding it to an error destination or  document & ignore certain cases.

Serialization errors, data transformations errors or any down stream processing error (processing through an iflow).

Avro, Protocol Buffers, Json & schema registries

Our product supports typical binary data formats like Avro and Protobuf with Kafka typical optimizations like a schema registry.

The adapter can translate Avro and Protocol Buffers to XML and vice versa. Necessary translations of Avro/Protobuf schemas are generated with an included schema generation tool.

Transformation from binary (Avro/Protocol Buffers) and Json to XML and vice versa is supported

SAP roadmap compatible

Our Kafka Adapter is available for SAP Process Orchestration & Integration Suite.

This allows you to just import any developed interface and it will work without migration efforts, adjustments, refactoring or anything which is often the case with other adapters or vendors (including SAP).

Choose your own timing and roadmap for a possible migration plan. Your investment in integrations on SAP PO is easily transferable on Integration suite without unknown risks / commercial questions. 

Difference to standard adapter for Cloud integration

• Standard adapter can’t use arbitrary positions or group names in stream for processing / reprocessing which is a very important feature to actually operate with Kafka.
• Our product supports all data formats (Avro, Protocol buffers and schema registries, automated schema generation)
• Our adapter allows batching into one iflow execution for hight throughput unlike the standard
• The KaTe Kafka adapter allows manual as well as automated error resolution which is not the case in the standard version.
• Filtering & Deduplication allows control to select exactly what you need on hight troughput topics unlike the standard
• With the standard adapter there are no simple mechanisms to quickly understand consumer lag or record search in your message processing log. It must be done with third party tools (that might be hard to access for a SAP integration team) or manual developments.

Further Information:

SAP Appcenter listing:

KaTe Kafka Adapter for SAP PO im SAP Appcenter

Our Blog on SAP Community

Hook your SAP landscape to Azure Event Hubs with KaTe Kafka Adapter & SAP PO/