Types of business objects

The full-scale business integration system, which uses WebSphere InterChange Server (ICS) as its integration broker, includes two kinds of business objects: application-specific and generic. However, WebSphere Business Integration Adapters for WebSphere MQ Integrator Broker uses only application-specific business objects, not generic business objects. Therefore, all references to business objects throughout this book refer to application-specific business objects. Many of the books in the IBM WebSphere Business Integration (WBI) Server documentation set cover both environments and therefore refer to both types of business objects.

When an application-specific component detects an application event such as an update, it retrieves the appropriate data entity from the application and transforms it into a business object.

Note:
When documentation refers to a business object whose name includes an application name, such as Clarify_Contact or Oracle_Customer, it refers to an application-specific business object. A Clarify_Contact business object, for example, contains the set of information that the Clarify application stores about a contact. In another application, a contact entity might store a somewhat different set of information, store the information in a different order or format, or have a different name.

After an application-specific component has built a business object, it sends the business object to the connector framework. The connector framework calls the data handler to convert the business object to a WebSphere MQ message to be dispatched to the integration broker.

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