Integrationintermediate
SAP Cloud Integration (CPI) / Integration Suite
SAP's cloud-native, BTP-hosted integration platform for connecting S/4HANA, SuccessFactors, and third-party systems.
CPI is SAP's current integration platform, running on BTP. It is where new integration work goes, particularly anything touching SuccessFactors, Ariba, Concur or S/4HANA Cloud.
CPI is like a cloud-based delivery and translation service you subscribe to rather than operating your own mail-sorting warehouse (PI/PO) - the service handles the machinery, and Cloud Connector is the secure, pre-arranged courier route it uses to reach your private building (on-premise system) without you having to leave your front door unlocked to the whole street.
Key Concepts
1
An iFlow is a pipeline you draw.
sender adapter -> content modifier -> message mapping
-> router -> Groovy script -> receiver adapter2
content modifier set headers, properties, or the body
message mapping field-to-field transformation
router branch on message content
Groovy script custom logic the standard steps cannot express3
The shape is the same as PI/PO's: receive, transform, route, deliver. What changed is that it runs as a
cloud service and is edited in a browser.
4
Credentials are handled differently, and this is the practical difference. Nothing is hardcoded.
Credentials live in the Secure Store and are referenced by alias, so an iFlow moved between tenants carries
no secrets.
5
Authentication for adapters is usually OAuth2 or client certificates rather than a stored username and
password.
6
Cloud Connector is how a cloud service reaches an on-premise system. This comes up constantly, because
the common case is CPI in the cloud needing an S/4HANA OData service inside a corporate network.
7
on-premise network SAP BTP
+-------------------+ +------------------+
| S/4HANA | | CPI |
| Cloud Connector |==tunnel==>| destination |
+-------------------+ +------------------+
outbound only8
The Cloud Connector opens an outbound connection to BTP and keeps it open. Nothing inbound is exposed,
no firewall port is opened, and the administrator declares exactly which internal hosts and paths are
reachable.
9
That direction of travel is the whole point, and it is the detail worth stating: the corporate network is
never opened to the internet.
10
Pre-packaged content saves most of the build. SAP publishes ready-made iFlows for common pairs —
S/4HANA to SuccessFactors, S/4HANA to Ariba — in the content catalog. You copy one and adjust it rather
than designing from nothing.
11
Monitoring. Message Processing shows each message's status, the payload at each step, and lets failed
messages be retried. Payload logging is configurable per iFlow, and turning it up in production for
debugging is normal — and worth turning back down, both for cost and because payloads contain business data.
12
Positioning. CPI is PI/PO's successor. PI/PO stays supported for existing landscapes; new work,
especially cloud-to-cloud, goes here.
13
What the interviewer is probing.1. "What is an iFlow made of?" Probing: the model. Stalls: "Steps." Moves up: a sender and
receiver channel with a pipeline of mappings, routers, content modifiers and script steps between
them.
14
2. "How do you handle credentials in CPI?" Probing: security. Stalls: "In the iFlow." *Moves
up:* the security material store — deployed credentials and keys referenced by name, never literals
in the flow.
15
3. "What is the Cloud Connector for?" Probing: the connectivity question. Stalls: "A
firewall." Moves up: a reverse-invoke tunnel from on-premise to BTP, so no inbound port is opened
and only whitelisted resources are reachable.
16
4. "How do you make an iFlow reliable?" Probing: the engineering. Stalls: "Retries." *Moves
up:* idempotent processing with the message store, explicit exception subprocesses, and JMS queues
to decouple retries from the sender.