This web-services framework software for small and medium businesses provides a secure, reliable, entree to Business Process Nets, allowing participation in supply chain integration, serving access to a full-set of features for B2B data sharing. All this is ON-Demand with ZERO client-side installation requirements. Broadband, a browser, and a good JDK ( 1.4.2 +) are the only requirements for building new data interfaces connecting multiple systems needing coordinated access to common data. In less than 5 minutes, you can be an integrated supply chain member , sending data to, receiving data from your affiliates.
Movement of data between businesses with application systems requiring greater data integration is the core responsibility of this software. These systems may reside at a single company, located on separate servers without capabilities for shared data access. In a different scenario, there may be servers located at multiple companies where there is a data integration requirement. In both scenarios, the software functions transparently, moving data between systems as required. Firewalls are easily handled by port 80 protocols ( Web Services or GridFTP ).
The software incorporates an open source, non-transactional implementation for PUB/SUB messaging. A software model built on the idea of a Post Office for Data is also included, used for establishing Virtual Post Office routes from the source (where data gets created) to the target(s) systems where data is needed. Virtual post office routes have configurable properties for connections, transport protocols, security, and dataContext. Whenever data needs to be shared, this software gets network connections on the indicated protocol ( HTTP, SOAP, GridFTP, SSH ), before moving XML Data and or files across the connection. A prime feature is flexible System Architecture with plug-ins to handle details of connections, security, and wire protocols.
Some of the requirements for data transfer are determined by standard B2B data forms.
Shared Business data, for example, is usually file based or XML based. Occaisionally,
it's email or MIME based.
Accordingly, software interfaces for these
general business data types must be able to work with and transfer the following:
Data Types
in the Java Language note the importance of the following core Java API's:
Here, you will see 2, hi-level Java interfaces for data having as
descendants 6 implementation classes with more detailed features for various Java data types.
By design, the Java Data interfaces above are accepted as is
in this software framework, and as a result,
the framework, in the current release as well as in future releases, has very powerful, flexible,
and extensible capabilities for data.
For example, any java XML data source can be "dropped" on the Post Office,
whose data interfaces would recognize and handle one of the following XML data types:
DOM, SAX, or Stream type XML data. Returning to the
idea of File-based data, any file that you see in Windows or in your File Manager
of choice can also be "dropped" on the Post Office for processing. Any file type, it doesn't matter:
text, image, binary.
For "flat" data to be exchanged, the data type would be MIME, FILE, or URL. Although among these 3 types, only the
FILE type is currently supported,
the addition of the other 2 is scheduled so that all of them will work transparently with this software. In
that case, the framework would support your dragging an email item from your inbox and dropping it on
the Post Office where the email's message attachments would be extracted and forwarded to your business
partner. Very slick, assuming that you have access to a
Java email client.
Note: this software imposes no additional requirements for data sources in terms of metadata or attributes
of the data being transported. There is no need to identify MIME Type; no need to calculate the LENGTH
in BYTES of the data enclosure. If you have an object that is an implementation of any of the interfaces
above, that object can be "dropped" on the Post Office and this system will process it.
Due to size constraints, there are some filters that might limit large
multimedia files from being processed.
The Framework supports standard XSLT type transformations. As long as you can provide the XSL Template file, the open architecture, with its reliance on the core java API's for XML data sources, makes reformatting of this kind a snap.
Using Interface based API's for connections, the software is very flexible and "pluggable". FTP and GridFTP of files to and from the Post Office are supported, as are SSH connections using an open java implementation. The standard O'Reilly upload servlet dialog for manual file uploads is supported. If a local XML parse operation is running and if a remote business partner wants event-driven, live delivery of an XSL Transformed version of the local XML nodes you can actually do all of that with this software. Here, the Local SAX parse events dump the related nodes into a stream that can be transformed on either end of the connection ( hopefully not both ). On the other end of the piped connection, applications of your business partner will see the same XML tree that you streamed on your end. If an XSL template was configured, then the reformatted markup will be what they have on their end. Local data, an XML DataSource, is also capable of being streamed directly into a SOAP transport connection as an instance of a javax.activation.DataHandler. The connection serves as a pipe that encapsulates encryption, serialization, and on-the-wire encoding. This is standard SOAP and JAX-RPC stuff. Scheduling of connections that share business data can be enterprise scheduled processes, regular interval polling processes, or seamless, event-triggered data movements.
| Description | Comment |
|---|---|
| On-Demand, Secure, Reliable connections for sharing B2B Data | |
| Virtual Post Office provides "fingertip" control for B2B Data using only your Browser | Thin-Client Control |
| "Scriptable" File Transfer Solutions that will run "unattended" and on your schedule | Polling Interval and Start, Stop Dates |
| Manually attended transfer session in your browser can be used to generate "command line expresssion" for scripted FTP solution | |
| Virtual "Peer2Peer Solution" where your data never resides on the PostOffice even though the PO controls the FTP of data | Third party FTP |
| Flexible PUB/ SUB messaging preserves loose affiliations of Data Producers and Data Users | Publish/Subscribe Messaging |
| Integrated XML Transformations | XSLT Demo |
| Email Integration hides standard B2BPO UI behind the more familiar Interface of your mail system. Solves standard Non-Secure Issues with email. | Email Demo |
| Configurable connection protocols for moving data to and from the PostOffice. Switch among protocols by recoding entry in XML config file. | SSL, FTP, SOAP, HTTP, GridFTP , BEEP |