Collaboration objects and groups

A collaboration object is an instance of a collaboration template. To configure a collaboration, you must:

  1. Create a new collaboration object from a collaboration template. For more information, see Creating a collaboration object.
  2. Bind the ports of the collaboration object, either internally (to a connector or another collaboration) or externally (to an external process that calls the collaboration, such as an e-business web application servlet). For more information, see Binding collaboration object ports.
  3. Configure the general properties of the collaboration object. For more information, see Configuring collaboration object general properties.
  4. Configure the collaboration-specific properties for the collaboration object. For more information, see Configuring collaboration-specific properties.

When you create an internal binding, you can bind only to connectors or collaborations that support the business object expected by the collaboration port. This allows communication between the bound components, allowing the collaboration to send and receive business objects, as well as receive responses to requests. A collaboration cannot run until you bind all its ports.

You can create multiple collaboration objects from a single collaboration template. For example, two collaborations from the same template can implement the same logic across two sets of applications at your site.

Collaboration object groups

A collaboration object group is a set of two or more collaboration objects that are bound to one another.

When you configure a collaboration object's port to receive an incoming business object from another collaboration object or to send an outgoing business object to another collaboration object, the combination of collaboration objects is a collaboration object group. Any number of collaboration objects can be bound into a group.

The behavior of collaboration objects that are members of a collaboration object group is different from the behavior of those that are not members of a group. When you apply a command such as start, pause, or stop to a collaboration object that is a member of a group, the command affects all members of the group.

All members of a collaboration object group must support the same transaction level for one member of the group to execute transactionally. If you bind a collaboration object that has transactional level None to a collaboration object that has transaction level Best Effort, both run at level None.

Copyright IBM Corp. 2004, 2005