Overview of the ODA for Ariba Buyer

An ODA (Object Discovery Agent) enables you to generate application-specific business object definitions. A business object definition is a template for a business object. The ODA examines specified application objects, "discovers" the elements of those objects that correspond to business object attributes, and generates business object definitions to represent the information. Business Object Designer provides a graphical interface to access the Object Discovery Agent and to work with it interactively.

The Object Discovery Agent (ODA) for Ariba Buyer generates business object definitions from meta-data exported by Ariba Buyer at initialization. The Business Object Designer wizard automates the process of creating these definitions. You can view or make modifications to a business object definition before you save it to the server.

You use the ODA to generate business object definitions at two different stages:

  1. When the system is first set up: You must create a set of business object definitions for all integration events defined on the integration channel. Business object definitions and broker collaborations and workflows must be defined for all integration channel events that will be run as part of the database initialization.
  2. Whenever an object used in an integration channel event is modified in Ariba Buyer: You must run the ODA in Business Object Designer to pick up the changed meta-data for the object and export a new business object definition to the broker repository.

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