Partner Gateway components

The three major runtime components of Partner Gateway are the Receiver, Document Manager, and Community Console. A brief overview of these components is provided in the following sections. For more detailed information and for a description of prerequisite and related software, see Key concepts and technical overview.

Receiver

Documents sent by community participants enter the system through the Receiver. The Receiver stores the documents in a file system for the Document Manager to process.

In Figure 2, a document intended for processing by a back-end system, such as WebSphere Process Server, InterChange Server (ICS) or WebSphere Business Integration Message Broker, is sent from a community participant to the Receiver.

Figure 2. A document from a participant flows to a back-end system through the Receiver and Document Manager
A document from a community participant flows to a back-end system through the Receive and Document Manager of Partner Gateway.....A

Documents sent from the Community Manager to community participants reverse the process. The back-end system sends the outgoing document to a directory or through the HTTP, HTTPS, or JMS transport protocol to a Receiver set up for the directory or protocol type. The Document Manager detects the document and routes it to the community participant. In Figure 3, a document from a back-end system such as Interchange Server is received by the participant.

Figure 3. A document from a back-end system flows to a participant through the Receiver and Document Manager

Document Manager

The Document Manager polls the file system for documents, performs any user-configured processing, and then delivers the document to its final destination as shown in Figure 3.

Subsystems of the Document Manager also decrypt the document (if required), perform digital signature verification (if required), perform XML, EDI, ROD (record oriented data) transformation and validation (if required), and log entries about the processing of the document in the database repository.

Community Console

The Community Console provides a Web-based graphical user interface for configuring and administering the trading community, and for monitoring the flow of documents and processes within the community. With the Community Console, you can manage and troubleshoot current or past event, document, and process activity.

For example, if you find that documents are repeatedly failing for the same reason or from the same source, you can use the Community Console to quickly identify and resolve the problem. The Community Console gives you access to detailed reports and analysis on business processes, trends, and exception activity.

The Community Console is available to both the enterprise running Partner Gateway as well as to all the participants in the trading community. The Community Manager has visibility to the entire community on a 24 x 7 basis. Participants can access the Community Console through a Web browser to get a real-time view of the documents, processes, and events that relate to their trading activities.

Copyright IBM Corp. 2003, 2005