IBM E02HMLL-I Implementation Guide - Page 18

The responses that the collaboration receives from the connectors-referred to as service call responses-can be business objects containing business data (in the case of retrieve requests) or status reports (successful or unsuccessful). Figure 3 shows a simplified view of a business process that is initiated through a publish-and-subscribe interaction and completed through request/response interactions. The example shows a distributed business process that automatically generates an invoice when a customer service representative finishes working on a case. In this example, a hypothetical service billing collaboration uses connectors to exchange business data with three different applications. Service Billing Collaboration 1 Service Case Closed 2 Retrieve Customer Contract Connector Connector 3 Generate Invoice Connector Customer Service Management Application Customer Records Application Accounting Application Figure 3. A publish-and-subscribe, request/response interaction Figure 3 illustrates the following sequence in the business process: 1. A customer service representative completes work on a case. The connector detects the case closure as an event in the customer service management application and retrieves the relevant case data. The connector then publishes the event, making it available to a collaboration that has subscribed to it. These actions comprise a publish-and-subscribe interaction. 2. In order to compute the invoice amount, the collaboration needs the terms of the customer contract. The collaboration sends a service call request to retrieve the necessary data from the connector for the customer records application. The connector responds to the request. These actions comprise a request/response interaction between the collaboration and the customer records application and connector. 3. Using both the case information and the customer contract, the collaboration produces the information needed to generate an invoice. It sends the invoice creation request to the connector for the accounting application, which forwards the request to the application itself, and responds to the collaboration with a notification of success or failure. These actions comprise a request/response interaction between the collaboration and the accounting application and connector. 6 IBM WebSphere Business Integration Server Express and Express Plus: System Implementation Guide