Corporate Info | News | Solutions | Products | Partners | Services | Events | Download | How To Buy
eLink Adapter for Siebel Doc Home | BEA eLink Adapter for Siebel | Previous Topic | Next Topic | Contents | Index

Understanding EAI and the Role of eLink Adapters

This chapter contains the following topics:

- BEA eLink Solution Overview

- Overview of the eLink Adapter for Siebel

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 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 Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) integration for enterprise management.

The current BEA eLink Platform leverages the BEA eLink Platform infrastructure because it is based on a service-oriented architecture. Both BEA eLink Platform 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 eLink Platform 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 BEA eLink Platform

The BEA eLink Platform (in addition to all options and adapters) is highly scalable. Multiple instances of BEA eLink Platforms can collaborate so that work is divided between eLink instances and domains. BEA eLink includes SNMP integration for enterprise management. The BEA eLink Platform features compliance 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++ and Java (via Jolt) are supported. The BEA eLink Platform connects to any RDBMS, OODBMS, file manager or queue manager. 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 greater power and scalability than rules engines and formatters.

- The Business Process Option helps automate tasks in the business process and dynamically responds to business events and exceptions.

- The eLink Adapters provide the interface between the BEA eLink Platform and external applications, with out-of-the-box functionality (no programming required).

Overview of the eLink Adapter for Siebel

The eLink Adapter for Siebel provides communication between Siebel Enterprise Applications and BEA eLink Platform applications. The eLink Adapter consists of a server that processes all requests for Siebel services. This server is managed in the eLink Platform environment. The eLink Platform client calls the service advertised by the eLink to Siebel server. The eLink Adapter validates the incoming service request, then initiates the correct calls to the Siebel CORBA Object Manager to complete the request. This enables any eLink Platform compliant client application to access Siebel Enterprise Applications using the eLink Adapter for Siebel. Figure 1-2 illustrates an overview of the process.

Figure 1-2 eLink Adapter for Siebel Transaction Process Overview

The eLink Adapter for Siebel service can perform the following basic operations:

- New -- Creates a new Siebel business component object

- Update -- Updates the properties of an existing Siebel business component object

- Delete -- Deletes a Siebel business component object

- Read -- Reads the fields of a Siebel business component object

- Link -- Links two existing Siebel business component objects

- Delink -- Dissolves the link between two existing Siebel business component objects that were joined using the "Link" or "NewLink" functions

- NewLink -- Creates a new Siebel business component object in the context of an existing business component object and links the two

Copyright © 2000 BEA Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Required browser: Netscape 4.0 or higher, or Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 or higher.