The stages of business object development are as follows:
- Understand the data requirements that are critical to the
business process integration.
- If creating an application-specific business object, understand
the relationship among the connector, the data handler, and the
supported application-specific business objects.
- If creating a generic business object for use with the
InterChange Server, understand the relationship between the
collaboration object and the business object.
- Develop the business object definitions in one of two ways:
- Generation from a data source--the WebSphere business
integration system provides tools that facilitate generation of a
business object definition for some connectors. Such tools are
Object Discovery Agents or command line tools that are designed to
connect to an application and "discover" business object
requirements specific to a business entity and to generate
definitions from those requirements. Business Object Designer
presents a graphical user interface to Object Discovery Agents, and
helps manage the discovery and definition generation processes.
Check the user guides for the adapter and data handler you will be
using to determine if they have an available tool or utility. You
can also check the Connector Feature Checklist, which is available
on the main documentation page under the Connectors category. If a
custom adapter is being developed to communicate with an
application, you can use the Object Discovery Agent Development Kit
to create a custom Object Discovery Agent for the adapter.
- Manual--Business Object Designer is a graphical user interface
that facilitates the manual creation of business object
definitions. This interface is most useful for developing generic
business objects to use with InterChange Server, as there is no
application in which object discovery can be performed.
- If you used a tool to automatically generate the business
object definition from a data source, verify that the generated
structure and application-specific information conforms to
requirements. Reference the adapter user guide for the connector
that uses the business object definition determine any special
configuring that you must do manually.
- Test and debug the business object by running it through the
system; edit it as necessary.
The following illustration shows a visual overview of the
business object development process and provides a quick reference
to chapters where you can find information on specific topics.

