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BEA eLink Adapter for Portal Infranet Overview

This chapter contains the following topics:

- BEA eLink Solution Overview

- BEA eLink Adapter Feature Overview

  - What is Portal Infranet?

  - What is eLink Adapter for Portal Infranet?

BEA eLink Solution Overview

BEA eLinkTM provides an open Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) solution that allows applications throughout organizations to communicate seamlessly. Using EAI, you gain the long-term flexibility and investment protection you need to keep up with today's ever-changing business environment.

Typically, companies use packaged applications to automate internal operations, such as financial, manufacturing, human resources, etc. While they successfully address the needs of these specific areas, these proprietary platforms often do not work together. To compete today, you need a much greater exchange of information. Systems need to communicate at a process level within your own organization, as well as with customer's and supplier's systems. BEA eLink Platform is the underlying basis of BEA eLinkTM, a family of off-the-shelf enterprise application integration (EAI) products that leverage BEA's transaction platform to integrate existing legacy applications with customer-focused and business-to-business e-commerce initiatives.

BEA eLink Platform provides a proven infrastructure for integrating applications within the enterprise and across the Web. BEA eLink Platform ensures high-performance, secure transactions and transparent access to mission-critical applications and information throughout the enterprise and across the Web. Figure 1-1 illustrates the eLink logical architecture and shows where the eLink Adapters fit into the process.

Figure 1-1 BEA eLink Solution Illustration

The entire BEA eLink family (including all options and adapters) is highly scalable. Multiple instances of BEA eLink components can collaborate so that work is divided between eLink domains. BEA eLink includes SNMP integration for enterprise management.

The current BEA eLink Platform leverages the BEA TUXEDO infrastructure because it is based on a service-oriented architecture. Both BEA TUXEDO and BEA eLink communicate directly with each other and with other applications through the use of services. Multiple services are grouped into "application servers" or "servers". The terms, TUXEDO services/ servers and eLink services/servers can be used interchangeably. Because this document is specifically addressing the eLink family, the term "eLink service" and "eLink server" is used throughout.

The BEA eLink Platform complies with the Open Group's X/Open standards including support of the XA standard for two-phase commit processing, the X/Open ATMI API, and XPG standards for language internationalization. C, C++, COBOL, and Java are supported. The BEA eLink Platform connects to any RDBMS, OODBMS, file manager or queue manager, including a supplied XA-compliant queueing subsystem.

The following components operate with BEA eLink Platform:

- The Data Integration Option translates data models used by different applications into a common data format. It provides a cost-effective alternative to writing or generating programs to perform this function. It also handles complex translation with great power and scalability. The DIO leverages technology based on the TSI Mercator product, which is integrated with eLink.

- The Business Process Option helps automate tasks in the distributed global business process and dynamically responds to business events and exceptions. The BPO is currently implemented by integrating eLink with technology based on InConcert workflow management software.

- An eLink Adapter provides the interface between the BEA eLink Platform and external applications with out-of-the-box functionality.

BEA eLink Adapter Feature Overview

The eLink Adapter for Portal Infranet is an eLink Platform server that allows Portal Infranet functionality to be invoked in the form of services from a eLink Platform environment. Portal Infranet business services are advertised as eLink Platform services. Figure 1-2 shows the relationship of the eLink Adapter for Portal Infranet with eLink Platform and Portal Infranet.

Figure 1-2 The eLink to Portal Infranet Transfer Process

This section contains overview information for each of these topics:

- What is Portal Infranet?

- What is eLink Adapter for Portal Infranet?

What is Portal Infranet?

Portal Infranet is a customer management and billing system designed for IP-based businesses. It uses a database to integrate and store service information such as pricing models, business policies, and customer information. Portal Infranet supports the following business tasks:

- Customer Registration
  Information is collected from a customer, validated against the set business rules, and an account is created.

- Customer Management Process
  Modified information is collected, revaluated and stored in the Portal Infranet database and logged in the account for further reference (audit trail).

- Authentication and Authorization Process
  Portal Infranet authenticates users based on log-in and password, checks account status and authorizes access to individual services.

- Activity Tracking Process
  Portal Infranet tracks all of the activities (like login and logout) of the customer on a real-time basis.

- Real-Time Rating Process
  The rating process rates all of the activities from the activity tracking process and applies the rates based on the set pricing plan and updates the account.

- Billing Process
  This process collects all of the account information, charges the customer, and collects payment. This could be either by sending an invoice, charging a credit card, or by any other payment method.

What is eLink Adapter for Portal Infranet?

The eLink Adapter for Portal Infranet is an eLink Platform server that allows functionality within Portal Infranet to be invoked from the eLink Platform environment. Each unique Portal Infranet function that can be invoked is advertised as a unique eLink Platform service. This service can be invoked using request and response are FML32 buffers.

The eLink Adapter for Portal Infranet advertises multiple Portal Infranet business functions as eLink Platform services. These services are configurable in the adapter's configuration file. The services that the eLink Adapter for Portal Infranet offers may be called using the ATMI functions tpcall() or tpacall(). Both of these functions are request/response, but tpacall() is asynchronous while tpcall() is a synchronous invocation. The eLink Adapter for Portal Infranet advertises eLink Platform services for the following Portal Infranet business functions:

- Creating an Account
  Adding a customer account to the Portal Infranet billing system

- Deleting a Product from an Account
  Deleting a a product from an account

- Modifying an Account
  Modifying a customer's account information

- Modifying Payment Info
  Modifying a customer's payment information

- Modifying Billing Info
  Modifying the billing address of the customer

- Modifying Credit Balance Info
  Modifying a customer's credit balance

- Modifying Locale Info
  Modifying a customer's locale

- Modifying Contact Info
  Modifying contact information for a customer

- Adding a New Contact
  Adding contact information for a customer

- Querying Account Information
  Querying customer accounts

- Querying Product Information
  Querying product information

- Querying Rate Information
  Querying billing rate information

  Note: For a complete list of Portal Infranet Service interfaces, please see Appendix A, "Portal Infranet Service Interfaces" of this User Guide.

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