XML Gateway

It feels good to be back in business that is back to blogging. A huge backlog of mails kept me occupied yesterday, today i will talk briefly about Oracle XML Gateway as component of Oracle Applications. This is only indented to be a conceptual introduction and for the complete details you must refer to the user guide or appropriate metalink note.

XML Gateway is a tool that facilitates the communication between the Oracle E business suite and third party applications or trading partners in the form of well formatted XML messages.

XML Gateway ensures that both business to business (B2B) and Application to Application(A2A) requirements are met. Further XML Gateway ensures that the messages that are generated or consumed are compliant with the standards set by the Open
Applications Group. You can find more information on these standards at http://www.openapplications.org

Oracle XML Gateway works with Oracle Workflow to consume events raised and generate XML messages. These messages are further propagated using Oracle Advanced queuing technology and Oracle Transport agent(OTA).

Inbound and outbound messages are managed in queue table using Oracle Advanced Queuing.

The OTA is used to deliver messages to a trading partner over HTTP or HTTPs. An OTA servlet running with Oracle Applications is also responsible for receiving inbound documents sent by the trading partner.

Oracle XML gateway can be considered as a form of EDI, whereas in a normal EDI transaction the operation happens in a batch in case of XML gateway the message are more real time as they are based of events.

Oracle XML gateway makes use of the uses Web Services Description Language (WSDL) to facilitate trading partners to communicate with Oracle Applications. Trading partners can use third party web service tools to call the web services publish by your Oracle Applications.

It also uses the Java Messaging Service(JMS) to send messages between Oracle Applications and trading partners.

At the core of Oracle XML Gateway lies the execution engine, this is responsible for interacting with other oracle technologies like Oracle Workflow etc to consume and generate messages between trading partners as in the case of a B2B communication.

Oracle XML Gateway supports the SMTP, HTTP, HTTPS, JMS transport protocols for message delivery and consumption.

Oracle XML Gateway uses the Message Designer to define message maps, message maps are required to specify the data source and data target for the document. You can also use Map creation wizards that are provided for this purpose.

The message designer and wizard is a client software which is required to be installed separately on the client PCs.

Message map files have a .xgm extension. Message maps that are created on the loacle /client system have to be loaded to the middle tier APPL_TOP.

The java LoadMap and java DeleteMap are used to load and delet message maps on the middle tier server.

Its important to note that before you crate your message maps for your document you must ensure that the document conforms to the Document Type Definition(DTD).Pre defined DTD are installed and loaded in the $APPLTOP of the middle Tier. You can however load custom DTD that you can define using the Oracle Message Designer to the middle tier as well as modify existing DTD and delete existing DTD.

The DTD files are created with the .dtd extension.

The java DeleteDTDFromClob and java LoadDTDToClob are used for deleting and loading DTDs respectively.For complete syntax and example to load and delet DTDs refer to the Oracle XML Gateway users guide.

You can use the Oracle Applications responsibility 'XML Gateway Responsibility' to define trading partners and transactions.

In releases 11.5.7 onwards XML gateway is distributed as a part of AOL and does not require to be licensed or installed separately. For prior releases XML Gateway can be installed by applying patch 2440710.

The metalink note 152775.1 contains full instructions for installing and configuring Oracle XML Gateway.

You can verify your XML gateway installation byu executing the following sql script

SQL> $ECX_TOP/patch/115/sql/ECXTEST.sql

this will create a OUTnnn.xml if the installation and configuration of XML Gateway is successful.