The Server Access Interface supports business-to-business transactions that
require secure, reliable, external access by suppliers, vendors, or networked
corporate units to backend applications. What follows is a
business-to-business example involving two fictional firms, Firm A and Firm
B.
Figure 2. Business-to-business example

In this example, Firm A wishes to order 1,000 ICs from Firm B. For
authorized suppliers such as Firm A, Firm B supports call-triggered flows to
its IBM WebSphere InterChange Server-integrated backend. The process
unfolds as follows:
- A Firm A employee logs in to the Firm B Web site, entering an account ID
and password. The employee then places an order for 1,000 ICs.
The Firm B Web server authenticates the user as an authorized vendor.
- The access client initiates a call-triggered flow at Firm B's
e-business server (IBM WebSphere InterChange Server). Firm B's
Server Access Interface receives and processes the API calls from the access
client. The triggering access call indicates that the data is in XML
format.
- Firm A's call-triggered flow passes data to the XML data
handler. This data handler converts the serialized data into Firm
B's generic business-object format. Business object definitions are
extracted from the DTDs in the XML data stream and from the data-handler
meta-object.
- Firm A's access client executes the collaboration inside the Firm B
InterChange Server, launching an Order_Generation process.
The business object uses a IBM WebSphere collaboration that is appropriately
configured--one that is bound to a port with an access-client capability
and that has a map to convey data to and from that port.
- The business object is routed to a IBM WebSphere connector for SAP, which
accesses Firm B's SAP/R3 application and places the order. (Firm B
routes the order to its supplier sites for fulfillment). The
result--order confirmation--is generated and passed via a connector
back to the access client.
- Firm A's access client sends the resulting business object to the XML
data handler. The XML data handler parses and converts the result into
an XML data stream.
- The result is streamed to the Web server site, which launches a separate
process to e-mail the Firm A employee with confirmation of the transaction,
including the order number.
