Overview of Siebel Connector for IAA-XML

This chapter provides an overview of Siebel Connector for IAA-XML. It includes the following topics:

Oracle’s Siebel Connector for IAA-XML provides integration between Oracle’s Siebel Business Applications and other IAA (Insurance Application Architecture) based business models such as Customer Information Integration Solutions (CIIS) or other applications which support IAA-XML standard. The Siebel Connector for IAA-XML is a configurable set of components that you can use to exchange data between Siebel Business Applications and external IAA based applications and databases.

IAA are set of business data models built to support insurance industry. IAA-XML is IBM's messaging architecture standard for insurance industry. It allows different applications having different data models and running on different technologies to communicate. IAA-XML has 3 key benefits that address the problems in inter application communications:

Lack of shared semantic and content structure
Lack of shared syntax and
Technology Dependency

IAA-XML provides a messaging standard for inter-application communications for the insurance and financial services industries. For example, when two companies merge, IAA-XML can be used as the standard for the design of messages in a hub or a spoke architecture, providing the mechanism for integrating systems built on different platforms. It can also be used as a way of opening systems to business partners. For example, communication between a financial services company and its external network of intermediaries.

The Siebel Connector for IAA-XML is responsible for receiving, parsing and processing the business operations specified in the XML message that conforms to the specification detailed out in the IAA-XML specification document. This integration offers powerful capabilities designed to meet all the IAA message specification requirements. This solution allows you to effectively harness the synergies between Siebel front office applications and IAA based applications. The Siebel Connector for IAA-XML extends Siebel applications to integrate with back office data and business processes.

The Siebel Connector for IAA-XML supports both synchronous and asynchronous transactions across application boundaries. The resulting consistency and sharing of data allows efficient coordination between front and back office operations. For example, sales and service professionals can enter policy information in Oracle’s Siebel Financial Services applications and receive real-time response with a quote for the policy entered. The sales or service professional can then complete entering the policy details through the Siebel application interface by completing the requirements and issuing the policy to the customer.

Using the Siebel Connector for IAA-XML

To use the Siebel Connector for IAA-XML you need to

Install all required components. See Required Components.
Create integration objects. See Creating Integration Objects in Siebel Tools.
Define mappings for data between the Siebel application and the IAA-XML based external application. See Configuring the Data Transformation Maps.
Create integration workflows based on the mapped objects. See Sample Workflow IAA Add Party Outbound Workflow and Sample Workflow IAA Server Party Package Workflow.

Required Components

In order to implement messages between Siebel Business Applications and IAA compliant applications the Siebel Connector for IAA-XML requires the following components:

Siebel Financial Services Business Applications
Licensed to use the Siebel Connector for IAA-XML.

Note: To obtain license for Siebel Connector for IAA-XML from Siebel Manufacturing Operation contact your Oracle sales representative.
Licensed to use IAA (Insurance Application Architecture) models. Additional information about licensing these models can be obtained from your IBM Sales Representative or from www.ibm.com.

Optional Components

In addition to required components, there are optional component you may want to install to help with your integration process. These components are:

License to use MQSFSE (MQSeries Financial Services Edition). For details, see The MQSeries Financial Services Edition.

Note: For more information, contact your IBM Sales Representative or visit www.ibm.com.
License to use Oracle’s Siebel Event Manager to instantiate a Siebel Workflow Manager or you can write an eScript to instantiate your Siebel Workflow Manager. Siebel Workflow is delivered as a part of Siebel Financial Services Business Applications.

Architectural Overview

Siebel Financial Services EAI architecture is built on Oracle’s Siebel Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) architecture. Oracle’s Siebel Financial Services EAI framework has been built to support XML messaging based communication infrastructure. Customers of Financial Services have the need to integrate with many different applications through messaging mechanisms. To fulfill this requirement, many connectors have to be built to support various industry standards.

Siebel Financial Services allows you to build and deploy multiple connectors. To demonstrate such flexibility, Siebel Financial Services Application has built three connectors—Siebel Connector for IAA-XML, Siebel Connector for ACORD XML, and Siebel Connector for IFX XML—all based on the Siebel Financial Services EAI framework.

The following illustrates the high-level architecture of the Siebel Financial Services EAI and the standard connectors.

Note: For details, see Siebel Financial Services eBusiness Application Integration Guide.

High-level Architecture of Siebel Financial Services EAI. In this image, Siebel Financial Services EAI Architecture sits on top of Siebel EAI Architecture, which in turn sits on top of Siebel Business Architecture. IAA-XML Connector (including Party Message Specification and Premium Message Specification) and IFX XML Connector (including Teller Application and EBPP ) and ACCORD XML Connector (including Commercial Lines and Personal Lines ) all sit on top of Siebel Financial Services EAI Architecture. The following components are under Siebel Business Architecture: Security, Data Visibility, Workflow, Transaction Management, Data Synchronization and Replication, Data Analysis, Customization, Software Distribution, Personalization, Content Management, Routing and Assignment, Dynamic Load Balancing, MultiLanguage/Multicurrency, Data Movement, Application Upgrades, Access Control.

Siebel Connector for IAA-XML is built based on IAA-XML standards for insurance industry exchange and is designed to address the real-time requirement by defining transactions that include both a request and a response message. The Siebel Connector for IAA-XML provides functions such as:

Handling message header
Handling heterogeneous commands in the body section of an XML message
Data type formatting and conversions
Data model mapping through various modules

The Siebel Connector for IAA-XML modules include the FINS IAA Wizard, FINS IAA-XML Dispatcher, FINS IAA-XML Converter, FINS IAA-XML Data Transformation Engine (DTE), and FINS IAA-XML Transaction Manager.

Business Data Flow

Each standard integration or custom integration is based on the creation of business data flows. A business data flow controls the whole transformation of an IAA based data object to a Siebel data object and a Siebel data object to an IAA based data object. The following illustrates inbound and outbound business data flows. Some of the business flows might constitute messages published by IAA such as <AddPartyRequest>, <DeletePartyRequest>, <FindPartyRequest>, <ModifyPartyRequest>, <SubmitApplicationRequest>, <InquiryFinancialServicesAgreementRequest>, <InquiryFinancialServiceAgreementResponse> and so on. Some of these messages are included in the sample database as reference implementations.

There are two types of business data flows:

Outbound to External IAA-based application (Send)
Inbound from an external IAA-based application (Receive)

The processing flow for each of these business data flow is largely contained within a Siebel workflow process. The workflow process is then initiated by the Siebel Event Manager, or by a call from Oracle’s Siebel eScript based on an action performed within Siebel Business Applications to process the data in an outbound scenario. In an inbound scenario, the workflow will be instantiated by the Business Integration Manager.

Data Flow in the Siebel Connector for IAA-XML. This image contains the following components: Siebel User Interface, Siebel Object Manager(s), Database Server, Business Integration Manager, External Applications. There is an arrow going from Siebel User Interface to Siebel Object Manager(s) and then onto Database Server. There is an arrow going from Siebel Object Manager(s) to Business Integration Manager. There is a double-sided arrow going from Business Integration Manager to External Applications. Business Integration Manager contains the following components: FINS IAA-XML Transformation Manager, FINS IAA- XML Data Mapping Engine, FINS IAA- XML Converter, FINS IAA-XML Dispatcher, XML Hierarchy Converter, MQ Series, Internal Integration Object, External Integration Object.

Outbound Data Flow

As shown in the image in Business Data Flow topic, during an outbound data flow, the following takes place:

The workflow is instantiated, the FINS IAA-XML Transaction Manager takes all the ROW_IDs of the objects and the operation name as input.
The FINS IAA-XML Transaction Manager then extracts data from the Siebel database and then returns all the instances retrieved as property sets.
This data is then used to populate the internal integration objects based on the Siebel business objects.

Note: Property set is the representation of data in the internal format in memory and is used widely by the business services.
The internal integration object instances are then passed to the FINS IAA-XML Data Transformation Engine (DTE) which transform the internal integration object instances into external integration object instances. It also adds all necessary IAA specific command layer attributes into the instances.
Next, the FINS IAA-XML Converter converts all external integration object instances into proper XML integration object instance and adds the envelope, header, and other sections to the newly converted instance.
Then XML Hierarchy Converter converts this XML integration object instance from a property set format into a text format.
As a last step, the message is then sent to external systems using any transport mechanism supported by Siebel EAI such as, HTTP or MSMQ Receiver supported by Oracle’s Siebel EAI.

Inbound Data Flow

As illustrated in the image in Business Data Flow topic, an inbound business data flow starts with a Receiver Server Component such as the MQSeries, HTTP, or MSMQ Receiver. The Receiver runs in the background continuously waiting for message to arrive from external IAA-XML based applications. Upon receiving an IAA-XML message, it then invokes the workflow process configured to handle and process the data further. The workflow dictates the business logic behind the Siebel Connector for IAA-XML as follows:

The raw XML text string is passed through XML Hierarchy Converter to be converted into an XML integration object instance.
The FINS IAA-XML Dispatcher then traverses the XML instance and identifies the messages received according to the rule sets of the IAA Dispatcher Map and then identifies the envelope, header and body sections among the hierarchy nodes and sends it to the FINS IAA-XML Converter.

Note: The Dispatcher Map is created by the FINS IAA Wizard. For details, see FINS IAA Wizard.
The FINS IAA-XML Converter then takes the XML instance, and process individual sections of the instance while converting each sub-tree into external integration object instances before sending it to the FINS IAA-XML DTE.
The FINS IAA-XML DTE transforms the external integration object instances into internal integration object instances and passes it to the FINS IAA-XML Transaction Manager.
The FINS IAA-XML Transaction Manager then performs the operation specified in the instance by invoking the services configured in its user properties.

Workflow Integration

Siebel Workflow is the center of the business data flow. Workflow processes control the flow and transformation of data into and out of the Siebel applications. You create the workflow processes using a graphical user interface provided within the Siebel applications called the Siebel Workflow Designer.

Note: For details on Siebel Workflow, see Siebel Business Process Framework: Workflow Guide.

Integration Objects

Integration objects are the data containers used within the Workflow environment. They represent the data structure of either a Siebel Business Object or an external application's data object. You can create integration objects with the Integration Object Builder provided in Oracle’s Siebel Tools. The Integration Object Builder can create Siebel Integration Objects from Siebel Business Objects. For IAA integration process you need to select the FINS IAA Wizard as a wizard to build your integration objects. This wizard reads an IAA-XML Document Type Definition (DTD) and creates the envelope and header integration objects, the required external integration objects as well as the required internal integration objects. It then associates all of these in the rule-based dispatcher map. For details, see Configuration Roadmap .

Note: For more information on Integration Objects, see Overview: Siebel Enterprise Application Integration and Siebel Financial Services Enterprise Application Integration Guide.

Business Services

Business services execute predefined or custom actions in a workflow process. Examples of business services include the FINS IAA-XML Transaction Manager, the Siebel EAI Adapter, the FINS IAA-XML Converter, and so on. These business services act on property sets passed to them. They perform business logic operations such as interfacing with database, interfacing to IAA-XML based systems, or transforming one integration object into another. Oracle provides many business services but you can create your own. Although you can use business services to perform many different functions, they all have a standard interface. Business services have object-like qualities, such as methods, method arguments, and user properties. These elements define how a business service can be used. Business services are defined in Siebel Tools. This guide describes those business services used to interface to IAA-XML based systems.

Note: For more information on business services in general, see Integration Platform Technologies: Siebel Enterprise Application Integration.

IAA-XML Standard

As for the DTD which can be used, IAA has an interface design model maintained in Rational Rose which allows you to use a generation script in Visual Basic to generate IAA-XML messages and the DTD. This script uses not only the UML model but also additional generation directives to get to the precision level required by running code. You need to license the IAA models from IAA to get access to these design models and scripts. You can view and process the generated DTD by standard DTD editors and XML tools including the FINS IAA Wizard.

Note: For information on required version, see Siebel System Requirements and Supported Platforms on Oracle Technology Network and for more information about IAA, see www.IBM.com.