A collaboration begins a processing flow when it is triggered to do so by the arrival of a business object. The trigger can be any of the following:
Collaborations have the capability to interact with connectors in a manner that persists the context of a service call data flow for a specified period of time, without requiring the originating service call process to wait synchronously. If an appropriate response to the service call is received with the specified time period, the data flow is resumed and processing continues. This feature is referred to as long-lived business processes for collaborations, and can be enabled during the creation of the collaboration template.
Collaborations in an InterChange Server implementation can support the following types of service calls:
The synchronous outbound service call uses a synchronous request/response mechanism. The service call sends the request but does not complete until the response arrives and is processed.
Synchronous service calls support compensation. In addition, they support a time-out value for long-lived business processes.
An asynchronous outbound service call sends a request from the collaboration but does not expect or wait for a response before continuing its processing.
Asynchronous outbound service calls support compensation, but do not support a time-out value for long-lived business processes.
An asynchronous inbound service call waits to receive an incoming event and is used in conjunction with long-lived business processes. When an asynchronous inbound service call is created, it is given a time-out value; if the service call does not receive an incoming event before the timeout expires, an exception is raised.
Asynchronous inbound service calls are available only if the Long Lived Business Process Support option of the collaboration template has been enabled. The feature is used only for exchanges with connectors
Asynchronous inbound service calls do not support compensation.