The following list describes the primary roles of the components of the IBM WebSphere Business Integration Server Express system:
Collaborations are software modules that contain logic that describes a distributed business process. There are different collaborations for different fundamental business processes--for example, a ContactManager collaboration, or an InventoryMovement collaboration. Collaborations coordinate the functionality of business processes for disparate applications and enable data exchange between them. Collaborations are the hub; through them, data in the form of business objects is exchanged with the spokes.
Business objects are the messages used by the IBM WebSphere Business Integration Server Express system for exchanging data. Data handlers are used to transform serial application data into business objects, and maps are used between a business object that is structured for the data model of a specific application and a business object that is generically structured for use by collaborations at the hub.
Certain adapters, used for interactions with specific technologies, are supplied with both IBM WebSphere Business Integration Server Express and Express Plus. Other adapters, used for interactions with specific applications, can be obtained from the Adapter Capacity Pack. The Adapter Capacity Pack is separately available as an optional addition to IBM WebSphere Business Integration Server Express Plus.
Each individual adapter includes a connector component that is responsible for linking an application or technology to InterChange Server Express. Many adapters also include an Object Discovery Agent (ODA), which you can use to generate business objects that are specific to the application with which the connector interacts.
Each connector consists of two parts--the connector controller and the connector agent. The connector controller interacts directly with collaboration objects and resides on a server that has implemented the IBM WebSphere Business Integration Server Express system (the hub in a hub-and-spoke relationship). The connector agent interacts directly with an application, and can reside with that application on any server on the network.
Application adapters--for example, the Adapter for PeopleSoft-- are intermediaries between collaborations and applications. These connectors transform data from the application into business objects that can be manipulated by the collaborations, and transform business objects from the collaborations into data that can be received by the specific application.
Technology adapters, such as the Adapter for XML, are designed for interactions that conform to specific technology standards.
The Server Access Interface is part of the InterChange Server Express. It is a CORBA-compliant API that accepts synchronous data transfers from either internally networked or external sources. The data is then transformed into business objects that can be manipulated by a collaboration. The Server Access Interface makes it possible to receive calls from external entities--for example, from web browsers at remote sites--that do not come through connector agents, but instead come through web servlets into the Server Access Interface.
The Server Access Interface and the connectors both make use of data handlers. In the IBM WebSphere Business Integration Server Express environment, new data handlers can be created from a modular group of base classes called the Data Handler Framework. Also provided is a Protocol Handler Framework. These frameworks make it easier to customize solutions and add connectivity for additional data formats and protocols in the future.
A typical IBM WebSphere Business Integration Server Express solution includes one or more collaborations and a set of business objects that represent business information relevant to an enterprise. The collaborations and business objects are used with connectors, with the Server Access Interface, or with both. Solutions can be implemented for applications distributed on a network, and depending on the requirements and components available, for applications that reside across the Internet.
In this example, the goal is to automatically update an enterprise resource planning (ERP) application when customer information changes in a customer interaction management (CIM) application that resides on the same network. The IBM WebSphere Business Integration Server Express solution might consist of the hypothetical CustomerSync collaboration, connectors for the CIM application and the ERP application, and definitions of business objects that represent customer information. Figure 1 illustrates that solution.
Figure 1. CIM-to-ERP Customer Data solution
Data exchange across the Internet can be implemented using the Server Access Interface and certain technology adapters. In this approach, the Server Access Interface is used to pass synchronous calls into the IBM WebSphere Business Integration Server Express; connectors that use Internet technology standards are used to send data from the IBM WebSphere Business Integration Server Express:
The Server Access Interface resides at a hub site on the InterChange Server Express (ICS). When the Server Access Interface receives a call, it sends the data to a handler for that specific data format (such as the XML data handler). The data handler transforms the data into a generic business object. The Server Access Interface then sends the business object to a collaboration. The collaboration performs its processes on the business object and responds, and that response is transformed back into the specific data format that was used at the beginning of the process.
To accept calls from external processes and send the calls as business objects to a collaboration, the Server Access Interface requires the following:
In the example shown in Figure 2,, at a site that has not implemented either the IBM WebSphere Business Integration Server Express system or a connector, a customer representative uses a web browser to obtain the status of a purchase order over the Internet from an ERP application (SAP in the example) that resides at a site that has implemented the IBM WebSphere Business Integration Server Express system. To enable this, the IBM WebSphere Business Integration Server Express uses the Server Access Interface, together with a collaboration (hypothetical in this example) for purchase-order business logic, an SAP connector, and definitions of business objects that represent purchase-order status information.
Figure 2. Execution of a call through the Server Access Interface