Implementing WebSphere Business Integration Express for Item Synchronization

56 Implementing WebSphere BI Express for Item Synchronization

6.2 What are business objects?

Collaborations and connectors interact by sending and receiving business

objects through the InterChange Server.

A business object reflects a data entity, a collection of data that can be treated as

an operative unit. For example, a data entity can be the equivalent to a customer,

an order, or, in the case of the item synchronization solution, an item from a

catalog (inclusive of all of the entity’s fields). The entity would typically be used in

an application or over the Web to contain business information.

A business object is a self-describing unit that contains a type (its name),

processing instructions (a verb), and data (attribute values).

򐂰 Business Object Type

Each business object has a type name that identifies it within the InterChange

Server. For example, the type might be Customer, Employee, or Catalog_Item.

򐂰 Business Object Verbs

A business object verb specifies an action in relation to the attribute values.

The verb can indicate various types of actions, depending on the role of the

business object (for example: create, update, and delete).

򐂰 Attribute Values

Attribute values represent data fields associated with the data entity, such as

Last Name, First Name, Employee ID, ProductID, and UPCEAN Code

Some attributes, instead of containing data, contain child business objects or

arrays of child business objects. Many of the UCCnet message structures are

extremely complex and contain many levels of child business objects within

child business objects: these are known as hierarchical business objects.

6.2.1 Application-Specific and Generic Business Objects

The InterChange Server includes two kinds of business objects:

򐂰 Application-specific

An application-specific business object reflects data entity attributes and the

data model of a specific application or other programmatic entity.

Note: This collaboration template is used only if you are implementing a

solution with the schema-based XML definition.

Chapter 6. About some of the key components 57

򐂰 Generic

A generic business object contains a set of business-related attributes that

are common across a wide range of applications, not tied to any specific

application's data model.

When the connector agent (through its application-specific component) detects

an application event such as an update, it retrieves the appropriate data entity

from the application and transforms it into an application-specific business

object.

After the connector agent has built an application-specific business object, it

sends the business object to the connector controller in the InterChange Server.

The connector controller exchanges business objects between collaborations

and the connector agent. Collaborations are generally application-neutral, so the

business object that a connector controller exchanges with a collaboration must

be a generic business object. The use of generic business objects enhances the

reusability of the collaboration because its business logic is not bound to specific

versions of specific applications.

6.2.2 What are the key business objects?

Many business objects are provided with the solution that define the complex

message structures required for UCCnet processing. The definition and creation

of application-specific business objects are the responsibility of the user and will

be dependant on an organization’s data schemas. We will show some simple

application-specific business objects in the following chapters to allow you to get

started.

The main business objects provided for UCCnet include the following:

1. ItemBasic business object

This business object is used to trigger UCCnet_ItemSync,

ItemCommandRouter, and UCCnetXSD_CIN_Dispatcher collaboration

objects. It contains data attributes that are common across all of the logical

organizations that use the item data.

A UCCnet_ItemSync collaboration object uses the ItemBasic business object

to compare the data it contains with the local information stored about (1)

items processed by the solution and (2) trading partners who are sources or

targets of retail item data.

An ItemCommandRouter collaboration object uses the ItemBasic business

object to determine how to route the data the business object holds.