Collaborations, business objects, and connectivity

The following list describes the primary roles of the components of the IBM WebSphere Business Integration Server Express system:

Example implementation solutions

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.

Integration on a network

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

Connectivity over the Internet

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

Copyright IBM Corp. 2004, 2005