Retek supports two categories of business objects: Retek generic
business objects and message-specific business objects. These differ
from one another in their representation of the payload:
- Retek generic business objects--message-independent business objects;
they represent messages that do not require any transformation but are merely
passed from the source to the destination. They contain:
- an ID field of type String that contains the primary key of the business
object; the content is "programmatically" set by the connector,
based on the settings in the KeyMO metaobject
- a Retek Message Header business object child object
- the message payload XML as a String
- Message-specific business objects--message-dependent business
objects; they represent the actual data coming from or going to Retek
applications. They represent messages that require specific
transformations and require a business object structure that maps the payload
tags to individual attributes. Message-specific business objects
contain:
- a Retek Message Header business object child object
- a message-specific child object that encapsulates the payload data in the
corresponding attributes
All Retek generic and message-specific business objects include a Retek
Message Header business object that contains the information needed inside the
broker for filtering and routing operations.
Each attribute of the Retek Message Header business object is either a
container attribute or a simple attribute that does not contain a child
business object.
The Retek Message Header business object has the following
attributes:
- family--Message family the message belongs to.
Examples: Orderphys, Supplier, Item, Appointment
- type--Message type the message belongs to.
- ID--Multiple cardinality NameValue attribute used to uniquely
identify the message; contains <name>=<value> pairs, one for
each key.
Example: A line item within a Purchase order (PO) contains
the PO number and line item number as part of the ID:
- <id> PONumber=12345</id>
- <id> ItemID=321</id>
- routingInfo--Multiple cardinality NameValue attribute that contains
elements used to route or filter messages for specific subscribers.
- name--Name of the routing field.
- value--Value of the routing field.
- source--Name of the adapter instance that published this
message; this attribute is filled at run time.
- userFolder--Multiple cardinality attribute that holds user-defined
properties; collaboration objects and/or flows may use this folder to
store relevant information at run time.
- retry--Boolean flag designed to indicate whether a retry-create
operation is desired for this update message in case it fails during request
processing; this flag is set to FALSE by default, but can be switched to
TRUE by a flow or collaboration object, if desired.
Retek message type encapsulates, besides the type of entity, information
about the action performed on the entity. Support is provided for three
verbs: create, update (called modify in Retek), or
delete. Shortened forms of these verbs are appended to the entity
type. Thus, by looking at the ending of the message type, you can
identify the verb for a Retek message business object. For message
types ending in Cre, a create verb is assigned; for message
types ending in Mod, a modify verb is assigned; and for
message types ending in Del, a delete verb is assigned.
Example: The following are the message types pertaining to
the Appointment entity type:
- AppointCre
- AppointMod
- AppointDel
