Adapter architecture

The adapter for Ariba Buyer enables Ariba Buyer to communicate with external applications such as SAP, Oracle Financials, and PeopleSoft.

Components

The adapter includes three primary components:

Figure 1 shows how these adapter components work together. They are described in detail in Adapter components.

Figure 1. Adapter architecture

Connectors and nodes

Ariba Buyer may be run in a multi-node configuration with the nodes all on one machine, or distributed across many machines in a multi-server configuration--provided that all the servers run the same operating system. In a multi-server configuration, each machine has at least one node. However, there is only one instance of the connector, regardless of the number of nodes.

Each node runs in its own process and communicates with its own instance of the integration channel, but all nodes communicate with the same Ariba Buyer application database.

Run-time events flows

Run-time event flows are bi-directional, and the direction depends on where the event originates.

For events originating from Ariba Buyer:

  1. A message object is sent to the integration channel of a specific Ariba Buyer node.
  2. The integration channel sends the message object to the connector.
  3. The connector maps the business object data in the message object to an application-specific business object (ASBO), using a business object definition created by the ODA at design time. It then sends the ASBO to the integration broker.

For events originating from the integration broker:

  1. The broker sends an application-specific business object to the connector.
  2. The connector determines whether the application-specific business object is a response to an earlier request by checking for the existence of a reply key in the object.
  3. The application-specific business object is converted to a message object.
  4. If the application-specific business object is a response to a previous request, the message object is routed to the node that originated the request. Otherwise, the message object is routed to the first available node.

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