A business object can act as an event, a request, or a response.
A business object can report the occurrence of an application event, an operation that affected a data entity in an application. The application event might be the creation, deletion, or change in value of that collection of data.
When a connector detects an application event and sends a business object to the integration broker, the role of the business object is to represent the event. So, it is called an event in the business integration system.
For example, a connector might poll an application for new employee entities on behalf of the integration broker. If the application creates a new employee entity, the connector sends an event business object to the integration broker.
Requests are typically generated as follows. The integration broker sends a business object message as a request to the connector framework, instructing it have the application-specific component insert, change, delete, or retrieve some data in an application.
When a connector finishes processing a request, it usually returns a response to the integration broker. For example, when a connector receives a request to create an employee record in the destination application, it sends a business object with the created employee data and a status indicator that shows that the create was successful.