Skip to main content

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 available APIs, see the InterSystems Tools Reference.

Adapter Library

InterSystems IRIS provides many adapters, and you can define your own. InterSystems IRIS provides adapters for the following scenarios:

Email

Receives email messages via the POP3 protocol and sends email messages via the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP).

See Using Email Adapters in Productions.

File

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.

FTP

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.

HTTP

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.

LDAP

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.

Managed File Transfer (MFT)

The Managed File Transfer adapter allows you to send and receive files from Box, DropBox, and Kiteworks managed file services.

MQSeries

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.

See Using IBM WebSphere MQ Adapters in Productions.

Pipe

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.

SAP

Allows a production to interface with the SAP Java Connector (SAP JCo).

See Using the SAP Java Connector in Productions for details.

Siebel

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.

SOAP

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.

See Creating Web Services and Web Clients in Productions.

SQL

Executes SQL statements against a remote database via an ODBC-defined or JDBC-defined connection.

See Using SQL Adapters in Productions.

TCP

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.

Telnet

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 topics 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 an IDE, 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
Any Using the File Passthrough Service and Operation Classes

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
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

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:

  • 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.

  • 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.

FeedbackOpens in a new tab