B2B Integration : A Practical Guide to Collaborative E-commerce

266 B2B Integration — A Practical Guide to Collaborative E-commerce
9.3.4. Workflow manager
Integration brokers work on the definition and management of the flow
of messages that represent business processes between integrated
applications. Thus, it is imperative for them to have a sophisticated
workflow manager, which would allow users to visually create workflows
representing inter-company business processes in the form of a sequence
of events, routes, tasks and users. The execution environment should
support event triggers, rules-based processing, threaded conversations,
automatic event notification, timing control, triggers, exception
management and alternative and parallel routing of documents.
Advanced rules-based processing in an integration broker reduces
the messaging overhead with content-based message recognition and
routing. Rules support the creation and dispatch of multiple messages to
multiple destinations from a single input message, while allowing
different formats for each. The rules can be updated immediately, over
time or on a delayed time frame. This sort of flexibility provides
business users with effective control over business processes in a fast
changing B2B environment.
As a typical B2B example, an incoming purchase order may require
cross-reference checking with ERP system for valid component
identification number, financial system for verification of credit and
several other necessary steps to complete the integration into business
applications. These rules and the associated flow logic should be easily
created within the broker-provided graphical user interface and shared
between maps, reducing development time significantly.
9.3.5. Metadata repository
Metadata repositories store the definitions, formats, data elements and
flow of messages that are used to exchange data between companies.
Integration brokers can use these defined formats to parse and process
messages.
9.3.6. Administration tool
An integration broker should provide a graphical, user-friendly
administration tool that supports wide-ranging administrative functions,