The following terms are used in this guide:
- ASI (Application-Specific Information) Metadata tailored
to a particular application or technology. ASI exists at both the
attribute, verb, and business object level of a business object.
See also Verb ASI.
- BO (Business Object) A set of attributes that represent
a business entity (such as Employee) and an action on the data
(such as a create or update operation). Components of the WebSphere
business integration system use business objects to exchange
information and trigger actions.
- BO (Business Object) handler A connector component that
contains methods that interact with an application and that
transforms request business objects into application
operations.
- Connection object A special kind of proxy object that is
an instance of the connection class. A connection is a reference to
an application that can contain state information. For every
instance of a connection on the adapter side, there is a
corresponding object on the CORBA side. Connections can be
instantiated in batches, retrieved at will, sent back to the
connection pool, and be re-used by another thread.
- Connection pool A repository used to store and retrieve
connection objects.
- CORBA object The connector interacts with a CORBA server
by processing between a business object and a CORBA object. During
connector processing, a CORBA object (application) is represented
in the connector by a proxy object. A proxy is a Java class
that represents a CORBA object.
- Factory A special kind of proxy object that refers to an
application. If the appropriate connector properties are set, the
factory object, which is persistent for the life of the connector,
can create connections that are placed in the connection pool or
can create CORBA objects to be used by CORBA applications. The
number of connections created depends on the value specified in the
PoolSize property.
- Foreign key A simple attribute whose value uniquely
identifies a child business object. Typically, this attribute
identifies a child business object to its parent by containing the
child's primary key value. The connector for CORBA uses the foreign
key to specify poolable connection objects.
- IDLJ The connector for CORBA supports IBM Java Object
Request Broker (ORB), which uses the IDLJ compiler tool. This tool
allows Java programs to communicate with CORBA objects by
generating the Java proxy classes that the connector requires at
runtime to generate proxy objects that in turn invoke CORBA
objects. The properties, structures, and methods of a CORBA object
are defined in an IDL (Interface Definition Language) file. Using
the proxy object class definitions that the IDLJ compiler tool
creates through the ODA, the connector can invoke the CORBA methods
of an object that are defined in the IDL.
- ODA (Object Discovery Agent) A tool that automatically
generates a business object definition by examining specified
entities within the application and "discovering" the elements of
these entities that correspond to business object attributes. When
you install the adapter, the ODA is automatically installed.
Business Object Designer provides a graphical user interface to
access the ODA and to work with it interactively.
- ORB (Object Request Broker) A component in the CORBA
programming model that acts as the middleware between clients and
servers. In the CORBA model, a client can request a service without
knowing anything about what servers are attached to the network.
The various ORBs receive the requests, forward them to the
appropriate servers, and then hand the results back to the
client.
- Per-call object pool A programmatic entity for storing
objects that need to pass from one method to the next during a
single doVerbFor method call. Stored objects may be proxy
objects or simple attributes.
- Proxy class A Java class that represents a CORBA object
in the connector. The connector creates a proxy object instance of
the proxy class name specified in the business object's ASI.
- Verb ASI (application-specific information) For a given
verb, the verb ASI specifies how the connector should process the
business object when that verb is active. It can contain the name
of the method to call to process the current request business
object.
