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Transports and Interfaces: Siebel Enterprise Application Integration > EAI Transports and Interfaces Overview > About EAI TransportsTransports allow Siebel applications to exchange data with external applications using standard technologies for both synchronous and asynchronous communication protocols. Transports handle all data as binary data, because the IsTextData parameter that was available in previous releases is no longer supported. If you want to use character conversion on the transport, you use the CharSetConversion parameter. Handling the data as binary defers any character set conversion until needed and avoids conversion at the transport level to prevent data corruption. For example, treating a UTF-8 XML as text when the conversion executes leads to an XML string in the local code page, while its header still describes UTF-8. You should treat all self-describing data including XML as binary. Character conversion argument is available in a number of business services. These business services are:
When business services are invoked from a workflow process, the valid set of encodings is controlled by a picklist. If the business services are invoked through scripting or similar mechanisms, the character set name is supplied textually. NOTE: For data validation or conversion from one encoding to another, you can use the Transcode business service if needed. For details on the Transcode business service, its method and supported character sets, see the Global Deployment Guide. Transports provide connectivity to virtually any communication protocol that can represent data as text or binary messages, including MQSeries from IBM, MSMQ from Microsoft, and HTTP. EAI Transports allow Siebel Business Applications to integrate with Web-based applications as well as legacy systems that are encapsulated using middleware. Transports are interchangeable. If you change technologies at any point, you can reuse existing workflow processes and logic by switching the transport adapter.
NOTE: EAI MQSeries Server Transport, EAI MSMQ Transport, and EAI File Transport business services are not re-entrant. For more information on transport re-entrance, see About the EAI MQSeries Transport Re-Entrance. About Transport MethodsThe method on a transport adapter's business service controls the action to be performed by the transport. There are two outbound methods and three inbound methods available for EAI Transports. Not every method is available on every transport. For each method, there are a number of common parameters, as shown on Table 4, as well as transport-specific parameters that are discussed in the respective chapter for each transport. Outbound Methods for a Transport Business ServiceAvailable outbound methods depend on the transport business service in use, such as EAI MSMQ Transport. The business service sends messages from the Siebel application using the appropriate communications protocol, such as MQSeries, MSMQ, HTTP, and so on. There are two outbound methods that you use to send requests from a Siebel application to another application:
Inbound Methods for a Transport Business ServiceAvailable inbound methods depend on the transport business service in use, such as EAI MSMQ Transport. The inbound methods monitor a specified queue and upon receipt of a message, dispatch it to another service. There are three inbound methods that can be used to receive requests from another application: NOTE: There are server components (called receivers) on top of the inbound methods that run as Siebel Server tasks. When running an EAI receiver such as the SAP IDOC Receiver, MQSeries Server, or MSMQ Receiver—using the methods ReceiveDispatch or ReceiveDispatchSend—if the dispatch service has an error, the receiver shuts down. Check the Status column on the Component Tasks for details about the cause of the error. |
Transports and Interfaces: Siebel Enterprise Application Integration |