The following terms are used in this guide:
- ASI (Application-Specific Information) Meta-data tailored to a
particular application or technology. ASI exists at both the attribute,
verb, and business object level of a business object. See also
Verb ASI.
- BO (Business Object) A set of attributes that represent a
business entity (such as Employee) and an action on the data (such as a create
or update operation). Components of the WebSphere business integration
system use business objects to exchange information and trigger
actions.
- BO (Business Object) handler A connector component that
contains methods that interact with an application and that transforms request
business objects into application operations.
- Connection object A special kind of proxy object that is an
instance of the connection class. A connection is a reference to an
application that can contain state information. For every instance of a
connection on the adapter side, there is a corresponding object on the CORBA
side. Connections can be instantiated in batches, retrieved at will,
sent back to the connection pool, and be re-used by another thread.
- Connection pool A repository used to store and retrieve
connection objects.
- CORBA object The connector interacts with a CORBA server by
processing between a business object and a CORBA object. During
connector processing, a CORBA object (application) is represented in the
connector by a proxy object. A proxy is a Java class that
represents a CORBA object.
- Factory A special kind of proxy object that refers to an
application. If the appropriate connector properties are set, the
factory object, which is persistent for the life of the connector, can create
connections that are placed in the connection pool or can create CORBA objects
to be used by CORBA applications. The number of connections created
depends on the value specified in the PoolSize property.
- Foreign key A simple attribute whose value uniquely identifies
a child business object. Typically, this attribute identifies a child
business object to its parent by containing the child's primary key
value. The connector for CORBA uses the foreign key to specify poolable
connection objects.
- IDL2Java The connector for CORBA supports Borland VisiBroker
4.5, which uses the IDL2Java IDL compiler tool. This tool allows
Java programs to communicate with CORBA objects by generating the Java proxy
classes that the connector requires at runtime to generate proxy objects that
in turn invoke CORBA objects. The properties, structures, and methods
of a CORBA object are defined in an IDL (Interface Definition Language)
file. Using the proxy object class definitions that the IDL2Java IDL
compiler tool creates through the ODA, the connector can invoke the CORBA
methods of an object that are defined in the IDL.
- ODA (Object Discovery Agent) A tool that automatically
generates a business object definition by examining specified entities within
the application and "discovering" the elements of these entities that
correspond to business object attributes. When you install the adapter,
the ODA is automatically installed.
- ORB (Object Request Broker) A component in the CORBA
programming model that acts as the middleware between clients and
servers. In the CORBA model, a client can request a service without
knowing anything about what servers are attached to the network. The
various ORBs receive the requests, forward them to the appropriate servers,
and then hand the results back to the client.
- Per-call object pool A programmatic entity for storing objects
that need to pass from one method to the next during a single
doVerbFor method call. Stored objects may be proxy objects
or simple attributes.
- Proxy class A Java class that represents a CORBA object in the
connector. The connector creates a proxy object instance of the proxy
class name specified in the business object's ASI.
- Verb ASI (application-specific information) For a given verb,
the verb ASI specifies how the connector should process the business object
when that verb is active. It can contain the name of the method to call
to process the current request business object.
