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This chapter contains the following topics:

• BEA eLink Solution Overview

• Overview of the eLink Adapter for Kenan Arbor/BP

BEA eLink^TM provides an open Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) solution that allows applications throughout organizations to communicate seamlessly. Using EAI, you gain the long-term flexibility and investment protection you need to keep up with today's ever-changing business environment.

Typically, companies use packaged applications to automate internal operations, such as financial, manufacturing, or human resources. While they successfully address the needs of these specific areas, these proprietary platforms often do not work together. To compete today, you need a much greater exchange of information. Systems need to communicate at a process level within your own organization, as well as with customer's and supplier's systems. BEA eLink Platform is the underlying basis of BEA eLink, a family of off-the-shelf enterprise application integration (EAI) products that leverage the BEA transaction platform to integrate existing legacy applications with customer-focused and business-to-business e-commerce initiatives.

BEA eLink Platform provides a proven infrastructure for integrating applications within the enterprise and across the Web. BEA eLink Platform ensures high-performance, secure transactions and transparent access to mission-critical applications and information throughout the enterprise and across the Web. Figure 1-1 illustrates the eLink logical architecture and shows where the eLink Adapters fit into the process.

The entire BEA eLink family (including all options and adapters) is highly scalable. Multiple instances of BEA eLink components can collaborate so that work is divided between eLink domains. BEA eLink includes SNMP integration for enterprise management.

The current BEA eLink Platform leverages the BEA Tuxedo infrastructure because it is based on a service-oriented architecture. Both BEA Tuxedo and BEA eLink communicate directly with each other and with other applications through the use of services. Multiple services are grouped into "application servers" or "servers". The terms, Tuxedo services/servers and eLink services/servers can be used interchangeably. Because this document is specifically addressing the eLink family, the terms "eLink service" and "eLink server" are used throughout.

The BEA eLink Platform complies with the Open Group's X/Open standards including support of the XA standard for two-phase commit processing, the X/Open ATMI API, and XPG standards for language internationalization. C, C++, COBOL, and Java are supported. The BEA eLink Platform connects to any RDBMS, OODBMS, file manager or queue manager, including a supplied XA-compliant queueing subsystem.

The following components operate with BEA eLink Platform:

• The Data Integration Option translates data models used by different applications into a common data format. It provides a cost-effective alternative to writing or generating programs to perform this function. It also handles complex translation with great power and scalability. The DIO leverages technology based on the TSI Mercator product, which is integrated with eLink.

• The Business Process Option helps automate tasks in the distributed global business process and dynamically responds to business events and exceptions. The BPO is currently implemented by integrating eLink with technology based on InConcert workflow management software.

• An eLink Adapter provides the interface between the BEA eLink Platform and external applications with out-of-the-box functionality.

The eLink Adapter for Kenan Arbor/BP provides communication between Kenan Arbor/BP objects and BEA eLink Platform applications. The eLink Adapter for Kenan Arbor/BP consists of a server that processes all requests for Kenan Arbor/BP services. This server is managed in the eLink environment. The eLink Platform client calls the service advertised by the eLink to the Kenan Arbor/BP server. The eLink Adapter for Kenan Arbor/BP validates the incoming service request and invokes the appropriate programs to complete the request. This enables any eLink Platform compliant client application to access Kenan Arbor/BP objects using the eLink Adapter for Kenan Arbor/BP. Figure 1-2 illustrates an overview of the process.

The eLink Adapter for Kenan Arbor/BP consists of a generic service that processes all requests to invoke Kenan Arbor/BP functionality. The functionality that is available to be called and the service names by which the functionality is advertised are defined in the configuration file. See Configuring eLink Adapter for Kenan Arbor/BP for more information.

The Kenan Arbor/BP business functionality is grouped into objects. For example, all business functionality directly affecting accounts is grouped under the Account object, all service functionality is grouped under the Service Instance object. Each eLink Platform service that provides business functionality belongs to a particular object. Further, the services belonging to an object are divided into groups based on the functionality they provide. For example, all services that update accounts belong to the Update group. These objects and groups are defined in the configuration file. See Configuring eLink Adapter for Kenan Arbor/BP for more information.

Addiitonally, each object may have some control parameters that specify information regarding the type of service needed. For example, a newly created account can have either an Active or Pending status. This type of information is specified in the configuration file. See Configuring eLink Adapter for Kenan Arbor/BP for more information.

The following diagram shows the architecture of the eLink Adapter for Kenan Arbor/BP. It illustrates business actions being translated into eLink Platform services.