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BEA eLink Adapter for Oracle Financials Overview

This chapter contains the following topics:

- BEA eLink Solution Overview

- Overview of Oracle Open Interface Architecture

- Overview of the eLink Adapter for Oracle Financials Outbound Process

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, or human resources. 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 eLink, a family of off-the-shelf enterprise application integration (EAI) products that leverage the BEA 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

The BEA eLink Platform

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 Simple Network Management Protocol (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 terms "eLink service" and "eLink server" are 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.

Overview of Oracle Open Interface Architecture

The Oracle Cooperative Applications Initiative references many published third party products which provide import and export capabilities and allow loose to tight integration with legacy systems and other supplier systems. Oracle Applications products are built to be flexible by providing a number of open interfaces so you can link them with non-Oracle applications, applications you build, applications on other computers, and applications of your suppliers and customers. Oracle Applications products use interface tables and supporting validation, processing, and maintenance programs with the eLink Adapter for Oracle Financials to create its open interface architecture.

Overview of the Oracle Open Interface

This section describes the components that are generally common to all open interfaces.

Source Application

A source application passes data on to a destination application for further processing and/or storage. Typically, the data has completed processing in the source application before being passed.

Destination Application

Send data to a destination application so that it can perform further processing or provide storage.

Interface Table

The interface table is the intermediary table where the data from the source application temporarily resides until it is validated and processed into an Oracle Applications product. Table 1-1 shows the various types of interface columns in an interface table.

Table 1-1 Interface Table Columns

####

Column Name | Description
--- | ---
Identifier Columns | Uniquely identify rows in the interface table and provide foreign key reference to the destination application.
Control Columns | Track the status and monitor the error status of each row in the interface table as it is inserted, validated, processed, and ultimately deleted. Additional control columns identify who last updated the row and the last update date.
Data Columns | Store the specific attributes that the source application is sending to the Oracle Applications product.
Required Columns | Store the minimum information the Oracle Application product needs to successfully process the interface row. Some columns are conditionally required based on the specifics of the interface.
Derived Columns | Created by the destination product from information in the required columns.
Optional Columns | Not required by Oracle Applications products but can be used for value-added functionality.

Errors Table

The errors table stores all errors found by the validation and processing functions. In some cases, the errors table is a child of the interface table. This allows each row in the interface table to have many errors so that you can manage multiple errors at once. In other cases, the errors are stored in a column within the interface table, which requires you to fix each error independently.

Load, Validate, Process and Maintenance Functions

Upon population of the data in the interface tables, further integration is achieved by using the Oracle Applications load, validate, process and maintain functions. While the load function selects and accumulates data, the validate function ensures the integrity of outbound data into Oracle.

The process function processes the data, including recording transaction history, updating balances, and so on. The maintain function is accomplished from within Oracle Applications where the data transferred into Oracle is maintained through its life.

Overview of the eLink Adapter for Oracle Financials Outbound Process

The eLink Adapter for Oracle Financials enables a user program to take advantage of BEA eLink Platform to link to Oracle Applications. The eLink Adapter for Oracle Financials validates the incoming service request, transforms the data into an Oracle interface table format, populates the interface table, and invokes the appropriate interface programs to complete the request. This enables any eLink Platform compliant client application to access Oracle Applications using the eLink Adapter for Oracle Financials. Figure 1-2 illustrates an overview of the process.

Figure 1-2 eLink Adapter for Oracle Financials Transaction Process Overview

To begin the outbound process, the user program establishes a eLink Platform connection. The user program allocates a request FML32 buffer and then fills the FML32 buffer with data. After filling the buffer, the client application places a service request with eLink Platform (e.g., `Create this Item'). eLink Platform identifies the corresponding eLink Adapter for Oracle Financials service that is capable of fulfilling the service and transfers the request to the eLink Adapter for Oracle Financials. The eLink Adapter for Oracle Financials then validates the FML32 buffer data against the configuration file and maps it to the Oracle Applications interface table. The data is then inserted into the interface tables. Once the data is in the Interface Tables, the concurrent program specified in the configuration file is activated.

The concurrent program validates the data against the established business rules within Oracle Applications. The validated data is then put into the Oracle Applications system and is usable by the application program. At that point, a confirmation message is passed back to the client application through eLink Adapter for Oracle Financials and eLink Platform.

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