Overview of the development process

This section provides an overview of the business object development process.

Setting up the development environment

Before you start the development process, the following must be true:

Stages of business object development

The stages of business object development are as follows:

  1. Understand the data requirements that are critical to the business process integration.
  2. Develop the business object definitions in one of two ways:
    1. 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.
    2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. Test and debug the business object by running it through the system; edit it as necessary.

Table 3 is a visual overview of the business object development process and provides a quick reference to chapters where you can find information on specific topics.

Table 3. Business object development process

Tasks: Steps: Refer to:
Designing business objects

Identify data requirements

Understanding the relationship among connector, data hanlder and application-specific business object

If using the ICS integration broker, understanding the relationship between the collaboration and the generic business object


"Business object design"
Understanding Business Object Designer

Launching Business Object Designer

Using Business Object Designer

Working locally or connected to ICS


"Using Business Object Designer"
Working with business object definitions

Creating a business object manually

Creating a business object definition using an Object Discovery Agent (ODA)

Deleting a business object definition


"Developing business object definitions"
Creating an Object Discovery Agent

Understanding the appliation and its requiremetns

Learning about the structure of an ODA

Understanding the relationship between the ODA adn Business Object Designer

Learning about ODK classes


"Developing an Object Discovery Agent"
"Adding an Object Discovery Agent to the business integration system"
"Overview of the ODK API"
"AgentMetaData class"
"AgentProperty class"
"BusObjAttr class"
"BusObjAttrType interface"
"BusObjDef class"
"BusObjVerb class"
"CompleteCondition class"
"ContentMetaData class"
"ContentType class"

Copyright IBM Corp. 1997, 2004