![]() |
![]() |
|
|
BEA eLink Adapter for Portal Infranet Overview
This chapter contains the following topics:
BEA eLink Solution Overview
BEA eLinkTM 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, human resources, etc. 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 eLinkTM, a family of off-the-shelf enterprise application integration (EAI) products that leverage BEA's 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.
Figure 1-1 BEA eLink Solution Illustration
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 term "eLink service" and "eLink server" is 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:
BEA eLink Adapter Feature Overview
The eLink Adapter for Portal Infranet is an eLink Platform server that allows Portal Infranet functionality to be invoked in the form of services from a eLink Platform environment. Portal Infranet business services are advertised as eLink Platform services. Figure 1-2 shows the relationship of the eLink Adapter for Portal Infranet with eLink Platform and Portal Infranet.
Figure 1-2 The eLink to Portal Infranet Transfer Process
This section contains overview information for each of these topics:
Portal Infranet is a customer management and billing system designed for IP-based businesses. It uses a database to integrate and store service information such as pricing models, business policies, and customer information. Portal Infranet supports the following business tasks:
Information is collected from a customer, validated against the set business rules, and an account is created.
Modified information is collected, revaluated and stored in the Portal Infranet database and logged in the account for further reference (audit trail).
Portal Infranet authenticates users based on log-in and password, checks account status and authorizes access to individual services.
Portal Infranet tracks all of the activities (like login and logout) of the customer on a real-time basis.
The rating process rates all of the activities from the activity tracking process and applies the rates based on the set pricing plan and updates the account.
This process collects all of the account information, charges the customer, and collects payment. This could be either by sending an invoice, charging a credit card, or by any other payment method.
What is eLink Adapter for Portal Infranet?
The eLink Adapter for Portal Infranet is an eLink Platform server that allows functionality within Portal Infranet to be invoked from the eLink Platform environment. Each unique Portal Infranet function that can be invoked is advertised as a unique eLink Platform service. This service can be invoked using request and response are FML32 buffers.
The eLink Adapter for Portal Infranet advertises multiple Portal Infranet business functions as eLink Platform services. These services are configurable in the adapter's configuration file. The services that the eLink Adapter for Portal Infranet offers may be called using the ATMI functions tpcall() or tpacall(). Both of these functions are request/response, but tpacall() is asynchronous while tpcall() is a synchronous invocation. The eLink Adapter for Portal Infranet advertises eLink Platform services for the following Portal Infranet business functions:
Adding a customer account to the Portal Infranet billing system
Deleting a a product from an account
Modifying a customer's account information
Modifying a customer's payment information
Modifying the billing address of the customer
Modifying a customer's credit balance
Modifying a customer's locale
Modifying contact information for a customer
Adding contact information for a customer
Querying customer accounts
Querying product information
Querying billing rate information
Note: For a complete list of Portal Infranet Service interfaces, please see Appendix A, "Portal Infranet Service Interfaces" of this User Guide.
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
|
Copyright © 2000 BEA Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
|