Communicating XML Documents Among Applications

There are numerous ways to transmit XML documents among applications. This section presents some of the more common approaches.

In this discussion:

• The sending application transmits the XML document

• The receiving application receives the XML document

• File Transfer. The receiving application requests the XML document from the sending application via FTP, NFS, SMB or other file transfer protocol. The document is copied to the receiving application's file system. The application reads the file and processes it.

• HTTP. The receiving application makes an HTTP request to a servlet. The servlet returns the XML document to the receiving application, which reads and processes it.

• Web Form. The sending application renders a web form. A user fills out the form and submits the information via a Java applet or Javascript running in the browser. The applet or Javascript transmits the user's form in XML format to the receiving application, which reads and processes it. If the receiving application will ultimately write data to the database, the sending application should create the XML in a database compatible format. One way to do this using Oracle XML products is described in the section Sending XML Data from a Web Form to a Database.

• Advanced Queuing. An Oracle8i database sends an XML document via Net8 and JDBC to the one or more receiving applications as a message through Oracle Advanced Queueing (AQ). The receiving applications dequeue the XML message and process it.

  See Also: Chapter 9, "Using Oracle Advanced Queuing (AQ) in XML Data Exchange" Chapter 13, "B2B XML Application: Step by Step" Oracle Integration Server Overview