This section provides an overview of the business object development
process.
Before you start the development process, the following must be true:
The stages of business object development are as follows:
- Understand the data requirements that are critical to the business process
integration.
- If creating an application-specific business object, understand the
relationship among the connector, the data handler, and the supported
application-specific business objects.
- If creating a generic business object for use with InterChange Server,
understand the relationship between the collaboration object and the business
object.
- Develop the business object definitions in one of two ways:
- Generation from a data source--the WebSphere business integration
system provides tools that facilitate generation of a business object
definition for some connectors. Such tools are Object Discovery Agents
or command line tools that are designed to connect to an application and
"discover" business object requirements specific to a business entity
and to generate definitions from those requirements. Business Object
Designer presents a graphical user interface to Object Discovery Agents, and
helps manage the discovery and definition generation processes. Check
the guides for the adapter and data handler you will be using to determine if
they have an available tool or utility. You can also check the
Connector Feature Checklist, which is available on the main documentation page
under the Connectors category. If a custom adapter is being developed
to communicate with an application, you can use the Object Discovery Agent
Development Kit to create a custom Object Discovery Agent for the
adapter.
- Manual--Business Object Designer is a graphical user interface that
facilitates the manual creation of business object definitions. This
interface is most useful for developing generic business objects to use with
InterChange Server, as there is no application in which object discovery might
be performed.
- If you used a tool to automatically generate the business object
definition from a data source, verify that the generated structure and
application-specific information conforms to requirements. Reference
the adapter user guide for the connector that uses the business object
definition determine any special configuring that you must do manually.
- Test and debug the business object by running it through the system;
edit it as necessary.
The following illustration shows a visual overview of the business object
development process and provides a quick reference to chapters where you can
find information on specific topics.

