Connectivity Options
InterSystems IRIS® enables you to define inbound and outbound connections to a wide variety of technologies. There are three general categories of options: adapters, specialized business host classes, and gateways.
If the built-in tools do not meet your needs, you can create your own components. For a compact list of tools, see the table of contents of the InterSystems Technology Reference.
Adapter Library
InterSystems IRIS provides many adapters, and you can define your own. InterSystems IRIS provides adapters for the following scenarios:
Receives email messages via the POP3 protocol and sends email messages via the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP).
Reads and writes files on the local network. Able to open, create, delete, modify, and move files. The file content can be character or binary data.
See Using File Adapters in Productions.
Also see “Business Host Classes That Use File Adapters,” later in this chapter.
Receives and sends files between local and remote systems via the File Transfer Protocol (FTP). The file content can be characters or binary data. The adapters support FTP over TLS and SFTP.
See Using FTP Adapters in Productions.
Also see “Business Host Classes That Use FTP Adapters,” later in this chapter.
Provides an HTTP listener for custom port listening, XML listening, or raw HTML handling. Supports the standard HTTP operations Post, Get, Put, and Delete. Allows the use of proxy servers.
See Using HTTP Adapters in Productions.
Also see “Business Host Classes That Use HTTP Adapters,” later in this chapter.
The outbound LDAP adapter can send requests to an LDAP server and receive responses.
See the EnsLib.LDAP.OutboundAdapterOpens in a new tab entry in the Class Reference.
The Managed File Transfer adapter allows you to send and receive files from Box, DropBox, and Kiteworks managed file services.
Receives and sends messages in IBM WebSphere MQ (MQ Series) format. Message content can be a specific data type or a binary data stream. The adapter can simply send the message, or send it and then pull the corresponding response from the message queue.
Able to execute a shell command and communicate with it via pipes. Capable of handling character data or a binary data stream.
See the EnsLib.Pipe.InboundAdapterOpens in a new tab and EnsLib.Pipe.OutboundAdapterOpens in a new tab entries in the Class Reference.
Allows a production to interface with the SAP Java Connector (SAP JCo).
See Using the SAP Java Connector in Productions for details.
A subclass of the HTTP adapter that sends requests to a Siebel server and returns responses.
See the EnsLib.Siebel.HTTPOutboundAdapterOpens in a new tab entry in the Class Reference.
Listens for SOAP requests on a local TCP port or via a standard web server. Dispatches outbound requests by acting as a SOAP client to an external SOAP server. In this special case, adapters are not necessarily involved.
Executes SQL statements against a remote database via an ODBC-defined or JDBC-defined connection.
Manages an incoming or outgoing TCP connection. Allows simultaneous handling of multiple connections. Supports character and binary data streams, and counted data blocks. The adapters also supported framed protocols.
See Using TCP Adapters in Productions.
Also see “Business Host Classes That Use TCP Adapters,” later in this chapter.
Directly initiates and manages a Telnet connection.
See the EnsLib.Telnet.OutboundAdapterOpens in a new tab entry in the Class Reference.
To use an adapter, you define a business host class that uses the adapter class. For a general description of this process, see Developing Productions. The books in the previous list provide details that apply to the specific adapters.
As noted previously, you can also define your own adapters. For information, see Developing Productions.
Business Host Classes That Use Adapters
For specific scenarios, InterSystems IRIS® provides specialized business service classes and business operation classes that already use specific adapters:
To use these business hosts, it is not generally necessary to perform any coding.
For practical reasons, the following sections might not cover all the specialized business host classes that InterSystems IRIS provides. To find all the specialized business host classes that specify an adapter, perform a search in Studio, and look for Parameter ADAPTER within the EnsLib package. Studio then displays the names of the classes, which generally indicate which adapter they use.
Business Host Classes That Use File Adapters
InterSystems IRIS provides business host classes that use the file adapters. The following table summarizes the supported content types and indicates where to find information.
| File Contents | See |
|---|---|
| EDIFACT documents | Routing EDIFACT Documents in Productions |
| X12 documents | Routing X12 Documents in Productions |
| XML documents | Routing XML Virtual Documents in Productions |
| Fixed-column or delimited text | “Using the Record Mapper” and “Using the Complex Record Mapper” in Developing Productions |
| Any | “Using the File Passthrough Service and Operation Classes” in Using File Adapters in Productions |
Business Host Classes That Use FTP Adapters
InterSystems IRIS provides business host classes that use the FTP adapters. The following table summarizes the supported content types and indicates where to find information.
| File Contents | See |
|---|---|
| EDIFACT documents | Routing EDIFACT Documents in Productions' |
| X12 documents | Routing X12 Documents in Productions' |
| XML documents | Routing XML Virtual Documents in Productions' |
| Fixed-column or delimited text | “Using the Record Mapper” and “Using the Complex Record Mapper” in Developing Productions |
| Any | EnsLib.FTP.PassthroughServiceOpens in a new tab and EnsLib.FTP.PassthroughOperationOpens in a new tab in the Class Reference |
Business Host Classes That Use HTTP and SOAP Adapters
InterSystems IRIS provides business host classes that use the HTTP adapters. The following table summarizes the supported content types and indicates where to find information.
| File Contents | See |
|---|---|
| EDIFACT documents | Routing EDIFACT Documents in Productions' |
| Any | “Pass-through Service and Operation Walkthrough” in Using a Production as an ESB |
Business Host Classes That Use TCP Adapters
InterSystems IRIS provides business host classes that use TCP adapters. The following table summarizes the supported content types and indicates where to find information.
| File Contents | See |
|---|---|
| X12 documents | Routing X12 Documents in Productions' |
| Any | EnsLib.TCP.PassthroughServiceOpens in a new tab and EnsLib.TCP.PassthroughOperationOpens in a new tab in the Class Reference |
Gateways and External Servers
InterSystems IRIS provides the following gateways and external servers:
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The SQL Gateway, which provides access from InterSystems IRIS to external databases via JDBC and ODBC. You can, for example, link to tables and views in external sources and access the data in them in the same way you access any local data. See Using the InterSystems SQL Gateway.
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An InterSystems External Server allows you to instantiate and manipulate objects written in an external language as if they were native objects within InterSystems IRIS. See Using InterSystems External Servers. In most cases, using the PEX framework to interact with an external language from a production is preferred over using the $system.external interface provided by the external server.
