Integration Activities Performed by the Integration Broker

The Integration Broker performs integration activities, which are known as services.

Nearly any kind of activity can be a service in Gentran Integration Suite. All services
achieve some predefined type of integration activity. Examples of service activities
performed by the Integration Broker include:

✦ Communicating with external applications or middleware (using special services
called adapters)

✦ Performing data manipulations, such as translation, transformation, splitting, and
joining

✦ Routing data based on content or other criteria

✦ Publishing data to interested subscribers, which may trigger a new business process or
allow a running process to continue

✦ Execution of one or more B2B protocols

✦ Starting a business process

✦ Performing operations on SQL (Structured Query Language) database tables

✦ Enabling human interactions within an otherwise automated process


About Business Processes:-

The services that the Gentran Integration Suite Integration Broker runs are configured within defined business process models that you create and modify within the Gentran Integration Suite system.

A business process is a series of linked software (and possibly human) activities that accomplishes a business goal. The activities are called services, the modules of work that comprise business processes. The services must complete for the business process to run
successfully.

A business process model can be a simple linear configuration or contain one or more
decision points requiring human or system determination of the next steps in the process.


The high-level process for creating a business process model for Gentran Integration Suite
involves:

1. Analyzing your business needs

2. Determining which services, adapters, and components you must involve to
accomplish your goal

3. Configuring the services and adapters used in the business process
4. Testing the business process

Business Process Modeling Language

The Gentran Integration Suite Integration Broker runs business process models that have been created using Business Process Modeling Language (BPML). BPML is an XML-based language for describing business processes. It was developed by the Business Process Management Initiative (www.bpmi.org).

You can create business process models several different ways:

✦ Graphical Process Modeler (GPM)

✦ A simple text editor

✦ Any graphical editor that can export the XML format to Gentran Integration Suite

Unless you are proficient in the use of XML and BPML syntax, use the GPM to create your
business process models.
Business Process Flow

The Integration Broker automatically selects the appropriate business process model to run when data enters the system through an input adapter. When an input adapter receives data from an external system, the Integration Broker locates the appropriate business process or
processes to call, and starts the process or delivers the incoming data to the appropriate already-running process.

Following is an example of how the Integration Broker executes the steps in a business process as a document progresses through Gentran Integration Suite:

1. Gentran Integration Suite receives the business message or document through an adapter.

2. The Integration Broker determines which service to start next and starts the service, according to the content of the document.

3. The adapter places the message or document and other appropriate process state information on a queue for the appropriate service in the selected business process.

4. The appropriate service retrieves the initial business process state information from the queue and processes the next step in the business process.

5. Each service in the business process updates the business process state information, and records a copy of the related data or pointers to the data for process recoverability.

6. An adapter sends the modified business process state information, with the data, to a specific application.