Describing Outbound B2B Document Flows Built Using AIA Describing Inbound B2B Document Flows Built Using AIA

16-2 Developers Guide for Oracle Application Integration Architecture Foundation Pack Figure 16–1 Schematic Overview of the B2B Architecture of AIA Following are some of the key benefits of using AIA for B2B integrations: ■ AIA decouples participating applications from the B2B integration layer. Participating applications no longer need to track the varying B2B integration needs of trading partners. In addition, customers can add support for new B2B protocols and trading partner requirements without any impact to participating application code. ■ B2B document flows are often a subset of tasks that make up complex business processes, such as Order Capture. By building B2B functionality as a layer on top of Foundation Pack, the functionality is made available for reuse by multiple applications and business processes. ■ Existing AIA Enterprise Business Objects EBOs such as Customer, Supplier, Item, Purchase Order, Shipment, Invoice, and Catalog Address map to most of the commonly used B2B documents. Usage of these readily available EBOs, along with prebuilt B2B connector services B2BCSs for these EBOs, result in significant time and cost savings for B2B integrations.

16.2 Understanding B2B Document Flows

This section includes the following topics: ■ Section 16.2.1, Describing Outbound B2B Document Flows Built Using AIA ■ Section 16.2.2, Describing Inbound B2B Document Flows Built Using AIA

16.2.1 Describing Outbound B2B Document Flows Built Using AIA

Figure 16–2 illustrates a sample outbound B2B flow implemented using AIA: Introduction to B2B Integration Using AIA 16-3 Figure 16–2 Outbound B2B Document Flow Following are the key steps in an outbound B2B document flow: 1. Participating applications trigger requester Application Business Connector Services ABCS with Application Business Messages ABMs as their payloads. A best-practice recommendation is to use queue-based communication between the application and the requester ABCS while modeling fire-and-forget flows. This ensures that request messages are persisted, thereby guaranteeing their processing. 2. Requester ABCSs transform ABMs into Enterprise Business Messages EBMs and then invoke the Enterprise Business Service EBS implementation. 3. The EBS introspects the EBM and routes it to the correct provider B2BCS based on the trading partners B2B document preference. 16-4 Developers Guide for Oracle Application Integration Architecture Foundation Pack 4. Provider B2BCSs transform the EBM into an industry-standard B2B format and invoke the AIA B2B interface service. 5. The AIA B2B interface service populates the required header parameters and invokes the Oracle Fusion Middleware B2B component, passing the B2B payload as input. 6. Oracle B2B looks up the trading partner agreement corresponding to the trading partners and document type and securely transports the B2B document to the remote trading partner 7. In the case of non-XML format-based protocols such as Electronic Data Interchange EDI, the translation feature in Oracle B2B can be used to transform the intermediate XML generated by AIA layer to the non-XML B2B document format.

16.2.2 Describing Inbound B2B Document Flows Built Using AIA

Figure 16–3 illustrates a sample inbound B2B flow implemented using AIA: Introduction to B2B Integration Using AIA 16-5 Figure 16–3 Inbound B2B Document Flow Following are the key steps in an inbound B2B document flow: 1. Oracle B2B receives B2B documents from trading partners and identifies the sending trading partner and B2B document type. 2. In case of EDI other non-XML formats, Oracle B2B translates the inbound payload into an intermediate XML format. 3. The message is queued into a JMS B2B inbound queue. Along with the B2B document payload, the following key metadata about the B2B document are also passed along to the AIA and SOA composite layer: 16-6 Developers Guide for Oracle Application Integration Architecture Foundation Pack ■ From Trading Partner ■ To Trading Partner ■ Document Type ■ Document Type Revision 4. The AIA B2B interface receives the B2B document and header information from Oracle B2B and routes it to the correct requester B2BCS based on the Document Type parameter. 5. The requester B2BCS transforms the B2B document to the EBM and invokes the EBS. 6. The EBS introspects the EBM and routes it to the correct provider ABCSs. 7. The provider ABCSs transform the EBM to ABM formats and invoke participating application APIs or web services.

16.3 Understanding the Oracle B2B Component of Oracle Fusion Middleware