3037036 - Disruption in Integration with third-party system due to change in sequence of nodes in outgoing XML- SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition

You have a communication scenario set up to receive information in terms of incoming payload with content as XML output from an object belonging to SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition.

You use your own implementation to map the received XML content to corresponding fields of related business object in your system.

Post SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition upgrade / hotfix/ new feature delivery,  your implementation logic fails to effectively interpret the incoming XML content although no implementation change has been done at your (receiver) side.

SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2102

It is possible that your implementation logic is dependent on field-positions of the XML payload. Due to various functional and technical reasons, SAP might require altering the order in which the fields are sent.

Example: Assume a new party type is introduced at Purchase Order header. It will be incorrect to expect that the new party information will be appended at the end of the XML output. Rather, to keep the information more meaningful and on aesthetic grounds, this new party information will be introduced in the section where other header parties are positioned, and as a result, fields below and all sub-nodes under header will be shifted further down.

SAP cannot guarantee sequence of appearance of nodes, and such changes, if required to be introduced for reasons stated above, are not considered as incompatible changes.

To avoid such a situation, the implementation at receiver end should never depend on sequence of nodes or field-positions in a node. The logic should be based solely on the values of the fields passed.

EDI, SOAP API, EDI Channel, custom mapping, CPI mapping, XML, node sequence, Buyer, Supplier, Purchase Order, Sold-To, Purchase Order Output, Purchase Order Integration, OrderRequest_Out, Purchase Order - Send, Update, Cancel, SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition upgrade / hotfix/ new feature delivery, , KBA , MM-PUR-GF-EDI , Electronic Data Interchange , Problem