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Introducing BEA eLink OSI TP
This section covers the following topics:
BEA eLink Solution Overview
BEA eLinkTM provides an open Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) solution that allows applications throughout organizations to communicate seamlessly. Using EAI, you gain the long-term flexibility and investment protection you need to keep up with today's ever-changing business environment.
Typically, companies use packaged applications to automate internal operations, such as financial, manufacturing, or human resources. While they successfully address the needs of these specific areas, these proprietary platforms often do not work together. To compete today, you need a much greater exchange of information. Systems need to communicate at a process level within your own organization, as well as with customer's and supplier's systems. BEA eLink Platform is the underlying basis of BEA eLink, a family of off-the-shelf enterprise application integration (EAI) products that leverage the BEA transaction platform to integrate existing legacy applications with customer-focused and business-to-business e-commerce initiatives.
BEA eLink Platform provides a proven infrastructure for integrating applications within the enterprise and across the Web. BEA eLink Platform ensures high-performance, secure transactions and transparent access to mission-critical applications and information throughout the enterprise and across the Web. Figure 1-1 illustrates the eLink logical architecture and shows where the eLink Adapters fit into the process.
Figure 1-1 BEA eLink Solution Illustration
The entire BEA eLink family (including all options and adapters) is highly scalable. Multiple instances of BEA eLink components can collaborate so that work is divided between eLink domains. BEA eLink includes Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) integration for enterprise management. The current BEA eLink Platform leverages the BEA Tuxedo infrastructure because it is based on a service-oriented architecture. Both BEA Tuxedo and BEA eLink communicate directly with each other and with other applications through the use of services. Multiple services are grouped into "application servers" or "servers". The terms Tuxedo services/servers and eLink services/servers can be used interchangeably. Because this document is specifically addressing the eLink family, the terms "eLink service" and "eLink server" are used throughout. The BEA eLink Platform complies with the Open Group's X/Open standards including support of the XA standard for two-phase commit processing, the X/Open ATMI API, and XPG standards for language internationalization. C, C++, COBOL, and Java are supported. The BEA eLink Platform connects to any RDBMS, OODBMS, file manager or queue manager, including a supplied XA-compliant queueing subsystem. The following components operate with BEA eLink Platform:
BEA eLink OSI TP Overview
BEA eLink OSI TP is a gateway connectivity feature that makes it possible for OLTP application programs on BEA Tuxedo systems to perform global transactions and various non-transactional tasks with application programs in the following environments:
Figure 1-2 BEA eLink OSI TP Communicating with an OSI TP Partner
BEA eLink OSI TP is a software product that implements the OSI-TP standard, a set of protocols that is used to:
The Open Group XATMI standard is an interface that application programs use to communicate with other application programs both inside and outside of global transactions. It supports conversational and request/reply communication styles and is fully implemented by eLink OSI TP.
Data mapping and transformation between the BEA Tuxedo and mainframe environments is easily automated in BEA Tuxedo-based applications with the BEA Tuxedo typed buffer mechanism. This mechanism allows system administrators to predefine how data should be conveyed to the remote application. Application programmers do not need to be aware of this translation; they can simply continue using the buffer types defined for the local application. The eLink OSI TP software is designed to provide transparent access to remote services that reside outside a BEA Tuxedo application. In addition, eLink OSI TP provides remote application programs access to local services.
Figure 1-3 BEA eLink OSI TP Sample Environment
BEA eLink OSI TP Features
The eLink OSI TP product supports the following features:
BEA Tuxedo and eLink OSI TP Architecture
A BEA Tuxedo application consists of client and server programs that operate across a network of BEA Tuxedo systems. Any client program can request services that are offered by any server program running on any computer in the application. The location of server programs is kept transparent because remote services are mapped to servers in a section of the configuration file. The eLink OSI TP architecture comprises two distinct internal components, nw-bea and nw-unisys. These two internal components extend the transparent access of the BEA Tuxedo system by sending requests to and receiving requests from remote systems through OSI TP and supporting network software. Figure 1-4 shows how this transparent access works.
Figure 1-4 Routing Service Calls through BEA eLink OSI TP
The eLink OSI TP software is implemented as an ordinary BEA Tuxedo server group. It accepts standard BEA Tuxedo service requests and returns standard replies. The eLink OSI TP server group consists of the following components:
One eLink OSI TP server group acts as a gateway to multiple remote systems using multiple communications targets. Each communications target is a unique OSI TP endpoint called an association. There is one association or connection to the remote system for each call to the remote system. Once the call is complete, that association is reused by subsequent calls. There is a connection to the remote system for each simultaneous call made to the remote system. The association is released after a pre-set timer expires, turning unused resources back to the system. This pre-set timer is controlled by parameters specified in the OSI TP tailor file. Refer to Tuning OSI TP-Specific Tables with the TAILOR File for more information.
Some remote targets, such as remote BEA Tuxedo applications, also support BEA eLink OSI TP. In this situation, eLink OSI TP servers associated with the local gateway communicate with eLink OSI TP servers associated with remote gateways through OSI TP.
Other products such as remote Unisys A Series Open/OLTP systems, Unisys OS2200 systems, Unisys OpenTI for MTS interoperability, and ICL TPMS for Open VME provide analogous functionality with which local eLink OSI TP servers can interact.
The eLink OSI TP software maintains its own control information in shared memory, in much the same way that BEA Tuxedo software itself maintains the Bulletin Board. Although eLink OSI TP accesses the BEA Tuxedo Bulletin Board, BEA Tuxedo does not access eLink OSI TP control information.
To a remote system that supports the Open Group XATMI standard (more specifically, an XATMI application service element), the eLink OSI TP server group appears as a communications resource manager (CRM).
OSI TP Software Overview
Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) is a computer network architecture developed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in cooperation with other standards Organizations. OSI standards define protocols for communication between diverse computer systems in a network.
Benefits of OSI
By conforming to OSI standards, computer hardware and software vendors can enable applications on a local computer system to communicate with applications on remote computer systems that are manufactured by another vendor or have a different architecture from the local system.
OSI Reference Model
The OSI architecture is based upon a framework that divides the networking tasks and requirements into seven layers. The layers are groups of related functions or tasks, intended to make their interfaces and functions easier to understand.
Each layer contains entities that perform specific functions in the communication process. Entities throughout the network that are in the same layer and perform the same functions on different systems are called peer entities. They communicate with each other in a standard way. This is called protocol.
In the OSI Reference Model, peer entities cannot communicate directly. On the sending system, a layer entity uses peer protocols to attach a header containing routing and control information to the message being sent. It then passes this information down to the next layer. That layer adds its own header information and passes it to the next lower layer.
When the message reaches the receiving system, entities in each layer:
The following figure illustrates the seven common protocol layers of the OSI Reference Model.
Figure 1-5 OSI Reference Model
Transaction Processing Services OSI TP works with Tuxedo to provide the following services:
OSI TP Domains Components
The eLink OSI TP software and other eLink products act as gateways between BEA Tuxedo systems and other online transaction processing environments. Connections with remote systems are established by configuring eLink OSI TP as an ordinary BEA Tuxedo server group that identifies remote systems and available services.
The eLink OSI TP gateway is composed of several elements that can be configured to provide OSI TP solutions. For the most part, the OSI TP domain is much like the other domain gateways. It uses the DMADM and GWADM servers provided with BEA Tuxedo for administration.
The following diagram describes each component of the eLink OSI TP product.
Figure 1-6 Domain Components
Note: The gateway, GWOSITP, must be started AFTER the other servers.
If the eLink OSI TP gateway is used on multiple systems in the same domain, the UDMADM will send eLink OSITP-specific configuration information to the other systems in the domain. Refer to Utilities Reference for more detailed information about UDMADM.
Specific information on configuring the various sections of a domain are covered in the BEA Tuxedo document, BEA Tuxedo /Domain Guide.
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