All editions of WebSphere Partner Gateway provide the ability to connect to back-end systems. These editions differ in the transport protocols they can support, as follows:
Documents exchanged between the community participant and WebSphere Partner Gateway can be in a variety of formats. Documents can be in the SOAP, cXML, XML, EDI, record-oriented data (ROD), or binary formats or in any custom format mutually agreed upon by the participants. The Administrator Guide has a complete list of the document types supported as well as the transport protocols (for example, HTTP) that can be used to send the documents.
Documents that can be exchanged between WebSphere Partner Gateway and the back-end system of the Community Manager as well as the transport types associated with the documents are shown in Table 12, Table 13, and Table 14.
Figure 5 illustrates how WebSphere Partner Gateway uses the back-end integration interface to communicate with the back-end system at the Community Manager. Note that the arrows go in both directions; that is, the document can originate from the back-end system of the Community Manager.