B2B Integration : A Practical Guide to Collaborative E-commerce

264 B2B Integration — A Practical Guide to Collaborative E-commerce
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Figure 9.7. — Data transformation component
9.3.3. Data transformation component
Integration brokers should support an any-to-any document translation
paradigm. The data transformation component of an integration broker
performs the dynamic process of schema conversion and data transformation
of messages as they are exchanged between the source and
target applications (see Figure 9.7). It does so by deconstructing the
message from the source application, interpreting the meaning of data
using the metadata repository and mapping that data to the schema of
the target application and reconstructing the message. It changes the
original message structure and format based on the schema of each of
the target applications.
Without schema conversion and data transformation, no two disparate
applications can communicate with each other. It is the responsibility of
the integration broker to take the data from one application and transform
it in such a way that the receiving application can understand it, i.e., all
incoming messages have to be translated and mapped in the form of
outgoing messages for the receiving application.
As an example, consider the kind of data that can be exchanged for
a new user creation between CRM application and ERP application
with the WebLogic integration broker. When a new customer is created
in a CRM system such as Clarify, an event in BEA WebLogic Integration
is triggered, which initiates a business process that enters new customer
data into SAP R/3 and sends a welcome e-mail.