Business objects used by the JText connector

Business objects for the JText connector must deliver data in the format required by the data handler specified for conversion. However, the JText connector may not need a set of specially designed business objects comparable to application-specific business objects for an application connector.

For example, the NameValue data handler requires each piece of data to have a string that identifies it (such as CustomerName=Kumar, Region=NE, and Department=HR). Because every generic business object definition contains attributes whose names identify each piece of data, the JText connector can use generic business objects.

However, because generic business objects represent a superset of information required by a multitude of different applications, each generic business object usually contains far more information than is required by any one application.

Therefore, to convert data into a manageable size for each application, a good practice is to create your own business object for each type of data to be processed. In the business object, provide only the data required by the application and the information required by the data handler.

For example, for the FixedWidth data handler, you must ensure that every business object attribute has a value specified for the MaxLength attribute property. For the IBM WebSphere Business Integration Data Handler for XML, other specific information is required. On the other hand, for the NameValue and Delimited data handlers, the business object need not contain any information that is not already contained in a generic business object. See the Data Handler Guide for information specific to each data handler.

In addition to delivering data, a business object can contain information that enables the connector to dynamically obtain the business object's event filename or to return the output filename to the integration broker. To configure the connector for this dynamic processing, the application-specific information at the business-object level must contain the following name-value pair:

If the business object contains additional application-specific information that is used by the data handler, the name-value pair must appear first in the business object, and must be separated from the additional application-specific information by a semicolon (;). The connector reads the name-value pair up to the semicolon to determine whether to use dynamic processing, then passes any information that appears after the semicolon to the data handler.

Using a dynamic child meta-object

A dynamic child meta-object enables the filename to be exchanged with InterChange Server. This section describes:

Why use a dynamic child meta-object?

Create and use a dynamic child meta-object to cause the connector to do the following:

Service Call Requests

Event Processing

The connector populates the child's InFileName attribute with the name of the file from which the business object was read.

How to use a dynamic child meta-object

To cause the connector to process the filename dynamically, you must:

  1. Create a dynamic child meta-object with specific attributes.
  2. In the data business object, add an attribute that represents the dynamic child meta-object.
  3. In the data business object, specify the following in the application-specific information at the business-object level:
    cw_mo_JTextConfig = DynChildMOAttrName
     
    

    where DynChildMOAttrName is the name of the attribute in the data business object that represents the dynamic child business object. For an example, see Figure 2.

    Important:
    The cw_mo_ prefix is required when you use a data handler. If the prefix is missing, the connector writes the dynamic child meta-object to the specified output file as if it were a data business object.
  4. In the dynamic child meta-object, specify values for the attributes in the dynamic child meta-object.

Attributes of a dynamic child meta-object

A dynamic child meta-object must contain the following attributes:

Figure 2 illustrates an example Customer business object that contains a dynamic child meta-object.

Figure 2. Example of a dynamic child meta-object


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