Overview of the relationship development process

A relationship in the WebSphere business integration system is a two-part entity:

To define a relationship in the WebSphere business integration system, you must perform the following basic steps:

  1. Determine the type of relationship you need.
  2. Within Relationship Designer Express, define a relationship definition and define the composite participants.
  3. Within Map Designer Express, customize the transformation rule, if necessary, to maintain the relationship.
  4. Recompile the affected maps.
  5. Deploy the relationships and maps to InterChange Server Express with the Create Schema option.
  6. Ensure that the relationship database(s) exists and is defined correctly within the relationship definition.
  7. Populate relationship tables for any lookup relationships.
  8. Optionally, populate other relationship tables with test data for the testing phase.
  9. For each map, start all relationships in the map.
  10. Test the relationship with the Test Connector. Be sure to set the appropriate calling context as part of each of the tests.

Figure 90 provides a visual overview of the relationship development process and provides a quick reference to chapters where you can find information on specific topics. Note that if a team of people is available for map development, the major tasks of developing a map can be done in parallel by different members of the development team.

Figure 90. Overview of the Relationship Development Task


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