Designing for complex environments
iWay Trading Manager
Rapid, Easy-to-Maintain Partner Agreements
B2B channels are arteries through which all
business flows. A typical company with a few dozen suppliers, consumers, and business
partners might use hundreds of transaction types, with each transaction including
four to eight messages - a daunting constellation of interactions to manage effectively.
To manage the information and infrastructure of trading
partners, iWay Software has introduced iWay Trading Manager, a business-to-business
(B2B) integration tool that simplifies the creation of trading partner agreements,
as part of the iWay SOA Suite. It can also simplify the management of complex environments
within an organization. Most importantly, it leverages the existing functionality
of iWay Service Manager so that B2B interactions become a natural extension of an
organization's SOA efforts.
When
setting up an mechanism for interacting with a business partner, a user must answer
a variety of questions:
-
What protocols do we use to communicate with this partner (e.g., AS2, FTP)?
-
What document formats (e.g., XML, CSV, EDI)?
-
What document types (e.g., EDI 850, RosettaNet PIPs)?
-
What process do we execute while sending or receiving (e.g., priority handling,
different types or levels of information, etc.)?
-
How do these processes relate to existing services?
For
example, a user may call a service hosted by supplier A using FTP, comma-separated
values (CSV) files, and basic userid/password security, while calling supplier B's
service may require AS2, XML formats, and digital certificates; but service calls
may use the same processes up until the point at which they call the service. Conversely,
a user may use the same AS2 protocol, XML messages, and digital certificates to
communicate with two different suppliers, but handle each differently, for example,
if one partner has contracted a higher service-level agreement (SLA) than the other.
With one or two business partners, this may not become critical. But as organizations
add more partners, they need better control over how they interact with them.
iWay Trading Manager Components
iWay Trading Manager augments iWay Service
Manager with a design-time GUI and additional run-time capabilities that enable
organizations to more easily manage complex environments with many message types,
services, communication protocols, security requirements, and more.
Audit Manager.
The audit manager is called automatically at points during the message lifecycle.
It can be configured to record any stage of message processing. It can be accessed
from the Web console for transaction review. The audit manager is designed to be
extended or replaced depending on business requirements.
Correlation Manager.
The correlation manager identifies the state of a message (send, technical acknowledgement,
satisfaction), what acknowledgments are expected for each message, and whether they
have been executed. This can also be used to monitor service-level agreements (SLAs).
Trading Partner Information and Trading Partner Profile facilities.
These facilities
provide access to variables about each trading partner, correlation information,
and other important B2B information. This includes transformations and process flows
used for each partner, access keys (e.g., ISA06), error handler contacts, DUNS numbers,
and more.
Highly Extensible
iWay Trading Manager provides unique extensibility
options, ensuring that user exits will work as smoothly as the native capabilities
of the product. Conditional execution of exits provides total control over every
aspect of the system from within the Web console.