Architectural Overview

eXchange Integrator centers around the concept of a transaction profile for each trading partner relationship. Each transaction profile specifies values for parameters used in three different protocol layers:

• Business protocols such as X12 or HIPAA that codify agreements at the level of business messages/envelopes: business transaction types, validation, enveloping, batching, acknowledgment, and so forth

• Delivery protocols that codify agreements at the level of packaging and delivery: compression/decompression, encryption/decryption, signing/verification, and so forth

• Transports such as HTTP or FTP that codify agreements on where and how to deliver messages to and from trading partners.

eXchange Integrator uses the following key components:

• B2B Host Designer and attribute definitions— Using the Enterprise Designer GUI framework, eXchange Integrator provides an editor for setting up B2B environments, called the B2B Host Designer. Each B2B Host provides metadata for transports, delivery protocols, and business protocols, in the form of attribute definitions. The attribute definition metadata is stored on a directory server via LDAP. See Figure 1–2.

• Business Services (BPs, JCDs, OTDs)—eXchange Integrator leverages eGate and eInsight GUIs in theEnterprise Designer framework to provide a substantial library of prebuilt Business Processes (BPs) and Java Collaboration Definitions (JCDs) for selecting and handling protocols and accomplishing such tasks as batching, checking duplicates, and handling errors, as well as Object Type Definitions (OTDs) for communicating with transport-specific eWays and handling the ExStdEvent message.

  In addition to the core services supplied by eXchange Integrator, there are protocol-specific BPs, JCDs, and OTDs in each separately installable add-on Protocol Manager, for such industry-standard B2B protocols as X12 and HIPAA.

• ePM— eXchange Integrator provides a Web-based GUI called eXchange Partner Manager (ePM). This allows you to configure and manage B2B hosts and trading partners. and to assign the parameters that are used in transaction profiles. See Figure 1–5.

• LDAP Server—eXchange Integrator uses an LDAP-compliant directory server to mediate retrieval of trading partner information.

• eXchange Integrator Database—eXchange Integrator uses an Oracle database to store run-time information on correlation and message tracking.

• Message Tracker — eXchange Integratorprovides a Web-based message tracking GUI with powerful filtering and searching capabilities. See Figure 1–6.

The illustrations in Figure 1–2, Figure 1–3, and Figure 1–4 show some of the features provided by the various GUIs.

Figure 1–2 B2B Host Designer in Enterprise Designer

Figure 1–3 Example of a User-Created Business Process

Figure 1–4 Example of a Prebuilt Business Process (bpEX_DialogTOTP)

Figure 1–5 eXchange Trading Partner Configuration

Figure 1–6 eXchange Message Tracker