Overview
The IBM® webMethods B2B is IBM's secure, format-neutral, business-document gateway that recognizes and processes documents that are exchanged between partners. Through IBM webMethods B2B, you can exchange business documents with the partners in your network to relay production information.
You can create a B2B network, which is a group of organizations that agreed to exchange business documents. Participant organizations might include strategic partners, buyers, suppliers, and marketplaces (for example, Ariba Network). These participant organizations are referred to as partners.
Business documents that partners typically exchange include purchase orders, order statuses, purchase order acknowledgements, invoices, and other domain-specific documents. IBM webMethods B2B enables your corporation to connect to other organizations to form a business-to-business (B2B) network.
IBM webMethods B2B does not require that all partners in the network use IBM webMethods B2B or IBM software. Each of your partners might use their software to communicate with your instance of IBM webMethods B2B. If you have buyers, suppliers, or strategic partners who use other software, you can add them to your network by creating partner profiles for each of them. Partner profiles contain information about connecting to the partners and sharing information.
In the following figure, the partner in the center is referred to as the hub of the network or the enterprise partner. The other partners are referred to as spokes. The hub hosts the network and the spokes participate by interacting with the hub. A partner does not have to be exclusively a hub or a spoke; it can be both. It can be a hub of its network and a spoke in another partner's network.
IBM webMethods B2B satisfies the following business needs:
- Complete life-cycle management of business documents.
- Complete monitoring and tracking of a single transaction in an orchestrated environment.
Understanding the Terminology
The following table lists all the terms that are associated with IBM webMethods B2B.
| Term | Description |
|---|---|
| Activities | A log that IBM webMethods B2B maintains to record the activities that occur within IBM webMethods B2B. Modifications, updates, activities that are related to document exchange are typical entries on the Summary page for Transactions. For example, an activity entry gets created when you update partner information, when IBM webMethods B2B processes documents, or when you perform administrative tasks. |
| Channel | A channel forms the basis of communication in IBM webMethods B2B. It encompasses various underlying protocols such as HTTP, AS2 to facilitate document exchange. Therefore, all transactions among partners use the underlying transport and exchange capabilities of channels. |
| Comment | Add or update a comment that is associated with the document. For example, multiple users are responsible for handling documents that have processing errors. It is helpful to add comments about your progress. |
| Outbound Channel | A method for delivering a document to a partner. For example, deliver a document by using HTTP channel. You can send documents by using receiver's preferred outbound channel. |
| Business Document | A business document (for example, purchase order, acknowledgment, confirmation) sent to IBM webMethods B2B. You define exactly one type of business document for each document you expect to receive or send. |
| Enterprise | An enterprise is a special partner that typically represents a corporation, also known as the hub, local partner, or sponsor. |
| Functional acknowledgment | A functional acknowledgment (FA) is a transaction set sent back to the original sender of an EDI transmission. It confirms that the message is received and its syntax is acceptable. It does not indicate whether the receiver has processed the document. FAs are generated only for inbound documents from a trading partner and are not created when you submit a document by using Document submission feature. |
| Inbound Channel | A method for receiving a document from a partner. |
| Identity | The value of the identity type within a document. Several identity types are available in IBM webMethods B2B. For example, if the identity type is a DUNS number, the identity is the actual value of the DUNS number. |
| Profile | IBM webMethods B2B profile contains a summary of information about a corporation within a B2B network. The profile includes details such as identities, connections, certificates, contacts, and addresses. |
| Communication credentials | A communication credentials is an entity, which is authorized to send business documents in IBM webMethods B2B. |
| Processing Rules | IBM webMethods B2B processing rules define actions for processing inbound documents based on a specific criteria. |
| Partner | A partner is a participant organization in your B2B network. It might be a strategic partner, marketplace, buyer, or supplier. Each partner requires a profile. You can exchange business documents with the partners in your network to relay mission-critical production information. |
| Preferred Outbound Channel | A partner's preferred protocol through which it wants to receive documents in IBM webMethods B2B. |
| Reprocess | When you reprocess a document, you send the document back through
the processing rules. Note: If you reprocess a document without saving its attributes, the document
does not match the processing rules that use those criteria. Instead, the document matches with
another processing rule, such as the default rule, and processes the document according to the
actions defined in that rule.
|
| Resubmit | When you resubmit a document, you send the document to IBM webMethods B2B as a new document. For example, you might resubmit a document when the document does not match any type of business document. When you edit a document and resubmit it, a new instance of the document gets created and processed. The original document remains unchanged. |
| Service execution | Call an integration that is designed by using IBM webMethods Integration or any other integration software. You can use one of the following service execution modes to call an integration
|
| Tasks | IBM webMethods B2B creates internal tasks to monitor service execution if the execution mode is set to Reliable. It also delivers the document by using the receiver's preferred outbound channel. |
| Transaction | An end-to-end business-to-business document exchange corresponds to a transaction in IBM webMethods B2B. Regardless of the type of documents, channels that are used, a transaction is a neutral runtime aspect of a business-to-business document exchange flow. |
| Validators | Different types of validators are available to validate records, composites, and fields of a business document. You can validate the records composites by using conditional validators and fields by using either length or code list validators. |