Business objects for Ariba Buyer

The structure of application-specific business objects in the WebSphere Business Integration system is set by Ariba Buyer and mirrors the structure of the Ariba Buyer message object. Ariba Buyer currently supports two types of message object:

These message types are converted to business objects of one type or the other. Most Ariba Buyer events are of the request-response type.

Business objects inherit their names from the matching Ariba Buyer message objects. The names combine structural divisions, using the Ariba variant and partition names, and topic name. For example, SAP_NA_PurchaseOrderPush.

Business object names may not exceed 80 characters in length. If the business object name is longer than 80 characters, the ODA will display an error message and exit during business object generation. To avoid this, keep variant and partition names short.

If you do encounter this error, shorten the length of the TopicName in the MessageConfiguration.table and MessageDefinition.table files and regenerate your business object definitions. For details, see Generating business object definitions.

Required fields for business objects

Business objects contain two sets of fields:

The common fields are described in Table 9, and the additional fields in Table 10 and Table 11.

Note:
The additional fields in these two tables are mutually exclusive. You would use one set or the other, but not both.

Table 9. Required fields for all business objects

Required field Type Description
Variant String Name of the variant that sent or will receive this message.
Partition String Name of the partition that sent or will receive this message.
TopicName String Uniquely identifies an event. Default key value when creating business
object definitions.
ReplyKey String Uniquely identifies the message. Generated by the integration channel for
asynchronous events only.

Table 10 lists the additional fields required for all business objects of Request-Response type only.

Table 10. Required fields for Request-Response business objects

Required field Cardinality Type Description
RequestSchema 1 Specified by MergedSchemaName (if present)
or SchemaName in
MessageConfiguration.table.
Specifies request data types.
PullSchema_<n> N One PullSchema exists for each
Signature.Pull.Schema type defined in
MessageDefinition.table.
Specifies response data types.

Table 11 lists the additional fields required for all business objects of Subscribe type only.

Table 11. Required fields for Subscribe business objects

Required field Cardinality Description
SubscribeSchema N An attribute specifies the inbound object type for each schema
defined in the MessageDefinition.table.

Business object verbs

Every business object contains a verb, which describes how the data in the application-specific business object should be handled by the receiving application. Ariba Buyer defines a set of operations that are similar to verbs, but that describe only how incoming data should be loaded into the Ariba Buyer database.

Verbs and operations are handled as follows:

Table 12 shows the correlation between incoming application-specific business object verbs and Ariba Buyer operations.

Table 12. Correlation between ASBO verbs and Ariba Buyer operations

Verb (WBI) Operation (Ariba Buyer) Action
Create Create Creates any new objects in Ariba Buyer.
Delete Delete Removes from Ariba Buyer any objects that are in
the message.
Retrieve N/A Ariba Buyer cannot perform retrieves.
Update "Load And Delete" Updates new data values for existing objects, creates
new objects, and deletes objects in Ariba Buyer that
do not exist in the incoming message.
ABUpdate Update Updates new data values for existing objects.
Does not create new objects or delete objects
in Ariba Buyer that do not exist in the
incoming message.
Load Load Updates new data values for existing objects and
creates new objects.
Update_And_Delete "Update And Delete" Updates new data values for existing objects. If the
object does not exist in the incoming message, it is
deleted from Ariba Buyer.
Update_Elements_Only "Update Elements Only" Updates vector objects.

Attribute properties

The connector has various properties that you can set on its business object attributes. The tables below list the attributes and their values.

Table 13 lists simple attributes.

Table 13. Simple attributes

Attribute Property
Name Specifies the business object field name.
Type Specifies the business object field type.
MaxLength 255 by default.
IsKey Each business object must have at least one key attribute, which you specify
by setting the key property to true for an attribute.
IsForeighKey Not used.
Is Required Not used.
AppSpecInfo Holds the original Java type.
DefaultValue Specifies a default value that the connector uses for a simple attribute in
the inbound business object if the attribute is not set and is
a required attribute.

Table 14 shows the properties for child object attributes.

Table 14. Child object attributes

Attribute Description
Name Specifies the business object field name.
Type Specifies the business object field type.
Contained
ObjectVersion
For all attributes that represent child business objects, this property specifies the
child's business object version number.
Relationship If the child is a container attribute, this is set to Containment.
IsKey Set to true if the attribute name equals UniqueName, otherwise it is set to false.
IsForeighKey Not used.
Is Required Not used.
AppSpecInfo Holds the original Ariba Buyer field name.
Cardinality Set to N if the type represents an array or vector, otherwise set to 1.

Application-specific information

Application-specific information provides the connector with application-dependent instructions on how to process business objects. If you extend or modify a business object definition, you must make sure that the application-specific information in the definition matches the syntax that the connector expects.

Application-specific information can be specified on the business object and also on each business object attribute.

The application-specific information for the business object handles two key properties for the adapter for Ariba Buyer. They are:

The application-specific information for the business object attributes holds the original Ariba Buyer-specific java type.

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