Message Flow in a Production

Message Flow in a Production

An interoperability production typically processes incoming events as follows:

1. An inbound adapter receives an incoming event, transforms it into a message object, and passes it to its associated business service.

2. The business service creates a follow-on request message, and passes this new message to a business process or business operation within the production.

3. A business process that receives a request message executes a predefined set of activities, in sequence or in parallel. These activities may include sending follow-on messages to other business hosts. Business processes are also responsible for most or all of the business logic in the production.

4. A business operation encapsulates the capabilities of a resource outside InterSystems IRIS, usually an external software application. The business operation transforms properties of the request message object into a format usable by the external application API.

5. An outbound adapter manages the details of communicating with a specific external system or application from within the production. It transmits the API call to the external entity.

6. The response from the external system or application can trigger a cascade of response messages back to the external entity that started the flow of events. Details depend on the design choices made by the production developers.

As a demonstration, the following figure shows a trace of a set of related messages, which a production sent in response to an initial message (in this case sent by the testing service in the Management Portal rather than by an exterior source):

The processing can also include workflow, which makes it possible to incorporate human interaction into automated business processes. Uses of workflow within the enterprise might include order entry, order fulfillment, contract approval, or help desk activities. Other Production Options provides more information.