B2B Integration : A Practical Guide to Collaborative E-commerce

262 B2B Integration — A Practical Guide to Collaborative E-commerce
Integration brokers also have to provide an infrastructure and tools
for storing the messages in message warehouses (saving a copy of
all messages in a database or file, usually on disk and usually in an
unprocessed format). Warehouses provide functionalities of auditing
used for reporting, retrieving messages, associating messages with the
generators and message non-repudiation. They provide a persistent buffer
to store messages that could be lost in the event of the receiving
application being unavailable. Messages can be retrieved and resent to
the target application when it becomes available.
9.3.2. Application adapters
An application adapter provides a communication interface between the
underlying application and the integration broker. It allows messages to
be sent and received between the two, based on a business event or an
explicit invocation. Some of the common methods used by adapters to
enable communication include sequential file access, invocation of
component methods using APIs, RPCs and direct database access.
As discussed earlier, there is a different adapter for each application
to be integrated (see Figures 9.5 and 9.6). The integration brokers
should offer these adapters for the industry-leading enterprise applications
and offer pre-packaged integration solutions for integrating pre-built
applications with static code (such as SAP-i2, BroadVision-Siebel).
Application adapters drastically reduce the deployment time of integration
brokers, sometimes as high as 50%.
An adapter should also be available to enable the communication
between integration brokers and application servers supporting common
object request brokers including CORBA, EJB, COM and COM+.
Apart from providing adapters for core internal applications,
integration brokers should also provide adapters that hook up with
popular B2B trading exchanges, such as the Ariba Commerce Services
Network.
Integration brokers should include adapter development environment
and toolkit for graphically generating custom interface components.
The toolkit should also include APIs that make services of brokers
available.