Introducing C-Enablers

 

The following sections provide an introduction to c-enablers:

• Overview

• Conversations

• Transport Messages

• Message Routing and Filtering

 

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Overview

An electronic marketplace, or e-market, is an environment through which companies conduct B2B e-commerce. E-markets offer a set of services to conduct and manage conversations between various trading partners.

WebLogic Collaborate offers a flexible, extendable, and scalable solution to successfully implement e-markets. A WebLogic Collaborate system consists of two main parts:

• A c-hub

• A number of c-enablers that are deployed at participant trading partners' sites

A c-hub is the central point of control for an e-market. A single c-hub, representing one e-market owner, can host multiple collaboration spaces (c-spaces) in which trading partners use c-enablers to exchange data with the c-hub. For more information about c-hubs, see the BEA WebLogic Collaborate C-Hub Administration Guide.

The c-enabler is a 100-percent Java class library that is deployed at each participant node to allow access to collaboration spaces hosted on a c-hub.

The c-enabler is typically downloaded with authorization from the e-market administrator. To configure the software, a trading partner ID is needed from the e-market owner, who is operating the c-hub. Trading partners that successfully deploy c-enablers can communicate with each other through the c-hub, which is the central point of control. The c-hub provides shared services to c-enabler nodes such as conversation coordinator, subscription management, security, administration, routing, local logging, and XML services.

The following figure shows the c-enabler architecture with its key components.

Figure 1-1 C-Enabler Architecture

 

 

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Conversations

A conversation is a series of predefined message exchanges between trading partners that take place in a c-space in the context of a predefined business model. Each message in the conversation can cause any number of back-end transactions.

The following table describes the states of a conversation at run time.

Table 1-1 Run-time Conversation States

State	Description
INITIATED	A trading partner has initiated a conversation.
TERMINATED	The trading partner who initiated the conversation has terminated it.

 

A conversation definition is a set of roles and document definitions pertaining to one conversation:

• A role is the subscription unit in a conversation. To participate in a conversation, a trading partner subscribes to a specific role that is defined in the conversation definition associated with the conversation.

  A role is defined in terms of the documents that can be sent or received by a trading partner in the conversation. The role defines what a trading partner can do, such as buy or sell. Each conversation has two or more roles.

• A document definition is a schema that defines a valid document (such as a DTD).

Each conversation is associated with one conversation definition.

Conversation definitions, document definitions, and roles are configured on the c-hub for a specific c-space. For more information, see the BEA WebLogic Collaborate C-Hub Administration Guide.

 

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Transport Messages

A transport message is a data entity that is used to communicate between c-enabler nodes and c-hubs. There are two types of transport messages:

• A system transport message is a type of transport message exchanged between the c-hub and c-enablers that changes system activity, such as the notification of a conversation termination.

• A business message is the basic unit of communication exchanged between trading partners in a conversation. A business message is a multi-part MIME message that consists of business documents, attachments, and message header information.

The c-hub provides a messaging service to handle the routing of messages among c-enablers.

 

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Message Routing and Filtering

Message routing and filtering are used to:

• Restrict the list of target trading partners

• Restrict the kind of messages a specific trading partner receives

• Restrict messages to a specified set of trading partners

• Implement matching algorithms so information flows to the correct trading partners

WebLogic Collaborate supports send-side filters to select target trading partners. A send-side filter is used by an application when sending a document to determine the list of trading partners that should receive the document.