This First Look guide helps you develop interfaces in Java that connect systems together with an InterSystems IRIS™ interoperability production. An interoperability production is an interoperability framework for rapid connectivity and the development of new connectable applications. The production provides built-in connections to a wide variety of message formats and communications protocols. You can easily add other formats and protocols and use a graphic interface to define business logic and message transformations. Productions provide persistent storage of messages, which allow you to audit whether a message is successfully delivered. A production consists of business services, processes, and operations. Business services connect with external systems and receive messages from them. Business processes allow you to define business logic including routing and message transformation. Business operations connect with external systems and send the messages to them.

When connecting systems together, it can be challenging to get them to understand the other system’s messages and documents. For example, consider the following problem:

You can solve this problem using an InterSystems IRIS production. It provides the framework for defining an interface that accepts messages from the data collection system, transforming the message into one that can be understood by the repair system, and then sending it to the repair system. It also stores a record of the message path.

In this guide, you will learn how to connect two Java programs with a simple production. For demonstration purposes, this document uses very simple Java code. A Java program for the data collection system or the work order system would be more complex and require a DTD schema, but you would use the same procedure to connect them with InterSystems IRIS.

In its simplest form, a production consists of:

The following illustrates a simple production:

There are some business services and operations provided with InterSystems IRIS. If it has one that supports the message format that a system uses, you can avoid custom coding. But in many cases you will have to develop a custom business service and operation. You can develop these using the InterSystems IRIS ObjectScript or using Java.

Typically, the reason you choose to develop in Java is one of the following:

If you are developing a business service or operation in Java, you can use the Java Business Hosts feature to connect your Java code with the production. This allows you to do all of your business service and business operation coding in Java. The following illustration shows how the Java code connects to the InterSystems IRIS production:

You can use Java Business Hosts with the following kinds of messages:

To connect your Java code to the production, you have to implement the following classes and methods.

The Production object is provided as a parameter to the BusinessService OnInit method. It provides the following methods:

In this section, you will connect two Java hosts in a production. For demonstration purposes, these are very simple Java programs. Rather than getting messages from an external service, the business service just generates a random message. And the business operation writes the message to a log. Connecting to an external server requires more complex Java code, but you would follow the same process to connect the Java code to the production.

Before creating this example, you should do the following:

The Java code needs credentials to have access to the production. For this example, you can use the same InterSystems IRIS account that you use to develop a production. For a live system, you would create an account that has the privileges needed to run the production, but not any extra privileges.

To create the credentials, in the Management Portal:

In this step, you will create a new production, include the Java Business Host initiator, and generate the business hosts. In the Management Portal:

You have completed creating the production and generating the business hosts. In the next section, `you add the business hosts to the production and configure them.

In this step, you will add the business operation and business service to the production and configure them. In the Management Portal:

You’ve finished configuring the business hosts and the production. All the business hosts in the production diagram should be green and the production should be running. In the next section you will examine the messages.

Once you enabled the business service, the production started sending messages. To see the messages, select the Messages tab on the Production Configuration page. The messages are displayed as shown by:

To see the contents of a message, select Go To Message Viewer. Select Search in the message viewer, select a message, and select the Contents tab. The Message Viewer shows you the following:

The production continues to send messages. To stop the production:

Java Business Hosts provides an easy way to create business services and operations in Java. It uses the InterSystems IRIS Java Gateway to do this. Although it is more work to use the Java Gateway directly, it provides more options and capabilities than Java Business Hosts. For more information on Java Business Hosts and the Java Gateway,, see:

For more information about productions, see: