Understanding Transform Programs

This section provides overview information about transform programs.

A transform program is a type of PeopleSoft Application Engine program. After you create a new transform application engine program, you add steps and actions to the program, and then add code to the steps and actions that performs data transformation, filtering or translation.

To develop a transform program, you must know the initial structure and possibly the content of the message with which you are working, as well as the structure (and content) of the result you want to achieve. Make sure that all participating nodes agree on a format or employ transformations to accommodate the variations from node to node.

The message data is made available to your transform program in a PeopleCode system variable after being extracted from the wrapper in which it was transmitted. The format of this wrapper depends on the transmission method, but is irrelevant to the transform program.

Any participating node with PeopleSoft Integration Broker installed — the source, the target, or a hub — can apply a transform program to a given message.

You specify which transform program to apply within a routing definition for a service operation.

Note: With PeopleSoft Integration Broker, the term node refers to a system or application participating in an integration, but in this topic a node is also a structural element in an XML document. The context in which the term is used should make its meaning clear.

Transform programs cannot modify the following messaging features:

  • Transmission protocols.

    You handle a given protocol by selecting an appropriate target connector for the target node's local gateway, or by directing a third-party sender to the appropriate listening connector on the default local node’s local gateway. You can select from the delivered connectors or develop new ones.

  • Character set encoding.

    This is handled by the PeopleSoft globalization system.

Use a transformation when one node sends a request or response message with a data structure different from the structure required by the other node. One or both of the participating nodes can be PeopleSoft applications. At either end of the transaction, any of the following structure types may be required:

  • The PeopleSoft rowset-based message format.

  • An XML DOM-compliant non-rowset-based structure. This is generic XML data.

  • A SOAP-compliant XML structure. This is also XML DOM-compliant.

  • A non-XML structure. Third-party applications are more likely than PeopleSoft applications to require this type.

Your transformation can be between different structure types or between different structures of the same type.