Broadcasting in Sterling File Gateway

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Many customers have the need to broadcast or publish certain types of messages, like financial information or reports of some kind, this means sending the same file simultaneously to many different remote partners.

This blog aims to help Sterling File Gateway (SFG) administrators configure Broadcast correctly and it summarizes the main points of the different ways of configuring broadcast within SFG.

In addition you can also consult the already existing SFG documentation and white papers, see links at the end of the blog.

You can configure broadcast within SFG in two ways, using a system fact or using a BP, both ways will be summarized below.

1. Determining the consumer using a system fact.

   You can use the system fact BroadcastConsumerGroup in order to broadcast messages in SFG, you don't need to configure a provisional fact since this is already a system fact and known to SFG by default.

   This option requires that the consumer broadcast group name be a part of the original file name created by the producer for broadcasting.If you cannot identify the broadcast group to be used from the file name then you will need to create a provisional fact.

• You will need to create a group for all the consumers that would need to receive the file being broadcasted, per example create a group called ReportBroadcastGroup and assign to it all partners that will receive the report.
• Then you will need to create a dynamic routing channel template (RCT) where you will specify to determine the consumer using facts in producer file.

• On the groups page, you will assign a producer group that contains the partner that will be generating the reports and a consumer group that you have crated for Broadcast, following example above you would assign ReportBroadcastingGroup.
• In the producer file structure specify the regular expression to capture the consumer broadcast group and the file name and any other fact you might need, for this example we keep it simple and assume that the file being uploaded by the producer for routing will only contain the broadcast group and filename, per example: ReportBroadcastGroup_RealFileName.txt.

• So following the example above, the first part of the producer file name, before the underscore will identify the consumer broadcast group to be used and the second part, after the underscore will identify the file name to be used to deliver the file to the consumers.
• If you cannot identify the broadcast group to be used from the filename, you will need to create a provisional fact, see below link to the documentation that explains how to perform that action: http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/sfg/v2r2/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.ibm.help.sfg222_updates.doc%2Fsfgcreatebroadcastrct.html
• The consumer file mailbox pattern and file structure you would configure the mailbox path to be used and the file naming to be used on delivery to consumers.
• Once saved you would need to create a routing channel (RC) for the producer used for broadcasting. If you created a provisional fact, you would need to provide the name of the consumer broadcast group to be used when prompted for it, in this example you would use: ReportBroadcastingGroup.
• Once the RC created and a file uploaded to the producer mailbox that matches the template, the file will be sent to all partners that belong to the broadcast group specified.

2. Determining the consumer using a Business Process.

• You will need to develop a Business Process (BP) that generates in process data a list of consumers that will be receiving the broadcasted file.
• The BP can obtain the list of consumers by using any method you might want, per example:
  • LJDBC adapter to query a database table.
  • Use a properties file with the function sci-get-property.
  • Use the File system adapter to collect an XML file containing the list of consumers and parse into process data use the function DocToDOM.
  • Using a map.
• See below example of how process data should look like once the BP runs:

• Then when configuring the RCT, you will need to choose a Business process to determine the consumer, provide the BP to be used and the path in process data where the list of consumers is located.
• The rest of the RCT should be configured as you would any other template.
• Once you create a routing channel using this template and upload a file for processing to the producer mailbox that matches the template, the file will be sent to all partners in the process data list.

Hope this helps you implementing your broadcast scenario, for a more detailed step by step information about configuring broadcast in SFG, you might want to consult the white papers below:

Broadcasting using a system fact:

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27040098

Broadcasting using a BP:

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27042291

Sterling File Gateway official documentation:

http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/sfg/v2r2/index.jsp