Process Overview

Using eXchange Integrator to create a business solution consists of three phases:

• Design phase within Enterprise Designer

• Design phase within eXchange Partner Manager (ePM)

• Runtime phase

The purpose of the design phases is to: Create metadata for business protocols, delivery protocols, and transports; set up business logic for business services (BPs and JCDs); configure connections with external systems; create and configure trading partners; and associate each trading partner relationship with a fully configured transaction profile. When a trading partner is saved, its transaction profile settings are stored on the LDAP server. See Figure 1–3.

At run time, the Logical Host reads the transaction profile settings from LDAP to determine how to receive and process inbound messages, which business logic to run, and how to process and deliver outbound messages. Results are written to the Oracle database, where they can be filtered and viewed by the Message Tracker facility.

These phases are explained in the following sections:

• Design Phase: Using Enterprise Designer

• Design Phase: Using ePM

• Runtime Phase

Design Phase: Using Enterprise Designer

Within Enterprise Designer, theB2B Host Designer is used to create B2B Hosts. Each B2B Host is a logical collection of business and enveloping attribute definitions, messaging and packaging attribute definitions, and transport attribute definitions.

Attribute definitions supply metadata for a transaction profile — in other words, the types of parameters to be supplied for exchanging messages with trading partners.

After the B2B Host is set up, a connectivity map is created to connect it to both an LDAP external and an Oracle external. Building a deployment using this connectivity map and an environment creates an eXchange Service object in the same environment that contains the LDAP and Oracle externals and a B2B Configuration object. Entries related to the host attributes are updated in the LDAP database. (In future releases, the eXchange Service corresponding to the B2B Host is configurable with keystores, trust stores, and certificates for authentication and non-repudiation. ) Other connectivity maps are created, built, and deployed to connect the ePM GUI application with the LDAP external and the Message Tracker application with the Oracle external.

After the eXchange Service is created, it is used in connectivity maps (both user-created and also pre-supplied) to expose services such as batching/unbatching, dialogs with the trading partner, error-handling, and so forth. When a deployment profile is built and deployed that references the connectivity maps located in the eXchange⇒;Deployment project folder, the selector/handler BPs are exposed to ePM and made available for run time.

Design Phase: Using ePM

eXchange Partner Manager (ePM) is used to create and configure trading partners and to create transaction profiles — an association between a particular trading partner and a set of parameters whose metadata are defined by the B2B Host’s attribute definitions.

For example, if a B2B Host uses the HTTP transport attributes definition, then a transaction profile for that B2B Host can use HTTP for transport, and must therefore be provided a value for the URL parameter. Or, if it uses the FTP transport, then it must be provided values for hostname, target directory, and so forth.

Saving a Trading Partner profile stores all of its transaction profiles’ configuration settings in the LDAP database.

Runtime Phase

The Logical Host reads the transaction profile configuration and receives messages from all inbound delivery channels it references. The parameters for each transaction profile dictate how to handle the inbound message, in terms of acknowledgment, decryption, de-enveloping, authentication, and so forth. The business logic of the associated business services (BPs and JCDs connected to the eXchange Service) provide further routing and processing. For an outbound message, the transaction profile parameters dictate how to handle it (in terms of compression, encryption, signature, enveloping, and so forth ) and how and where to send it.

The Oracle database keeps track of all messages sent and received. It checks for duplicates and acknowledgments, performs correlations, and also allows you to use the message tracker application to search, filter, and view message-related information, such as receipts, acknowledgments, notifications, errors, and message attributes.