How Different Are Dell Boomi and SAP Cloud Integration (SAP CI)?

It seems like more and more organizations are choosing SAP CI as an alternative to Dell Boomi for integration between SAP Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and SuccessFactors Employee Central.

This presents integration consultants in the space with the opportunity to learn new technology. Unsurprisingly, developers with experience of Boomi will recognize commonalities within SAP CI at a high level, but they’ll find differences up close. Let’s quickly compare the two.

3 Key Differences Between Boomi and SAP CI

Structure Mapping

SAP CI funnels everything toward XML. Mapping between XML and CSV—a common scenario for Employee Central customers—is a multi-step process in SAP CI. Instead of putting an XML profile and a CSV profile on opposite sides of mapping in Boomi, SAP CI requires an XML-to-XML mapping and then a separate step to convert from XML to CSV.

Versioning

This is one key difference in terms of versioning between SAP CI and Boomi. In Boomi, every time the user saves a change to a process, a new version is generated that can be viewed or reverted. In SAP CI, however, artifacts have separate “Save” and “Save as version” buttons. Distinguishing between when you’re saving, and when you’re generating a new version has the obvious drawback of making it difficult to revert to just the right version. However, for users who are constantly saving (never a bad idea), the upshot is that the user has the option to keep a cleaner history with only essential versions.

Click-and-Drag Method

The SAP CI interface has some UI quirks that distinguish it from Boomi. Boomi’s click-and-drag method of placing components into a process can prove to be a hard habit to unlearn when moving to SAP CI’s click-and-click method. While this example is hopefully an easy “day one” takeaway for new SAP CI users, it’s representative of several simple differences that can prove time-consuming for those coming from a Boomi background.

2 Significant Similarities Between Boomi and SAP CI

Field Mapping

Other than SAP CI’s bias toward XML, individual field mapping is similar on the two platforms. SAP CI has a different layout for working on one field mapping at a time while still seeing the larger picture, but the differences are more cosmetic than fundamental.

Scripting

Boomi developers versed in Groovy script will be pleased to find that it’s also supported in SAP CI. The SAP CI web UI doesn’t always handle syntax issues gracefully, so you may want to copy/paste from a text editor to avoid losing work when you’re making changes.

In Conclusion: A Worthwhile Transition

All in all, SAP CI and Boomi are similar enough for Boomi developers to transition to the newer platform pretty quickly. Hopefully seeing a rundown of some similarities and differences will give you the confidence to take a swing at it.