Summary of Supported External Resources

This document provides a summary of the external resources provided by the Ebase system to integrate with external systems. Click here for more information on this subject.

Databases

Ebase supports access to any relational database that can be accessed via JDBC. This includes all commonly used databases.

Conceptually, this works as follows: the form designer first creates a database definition - this represents Ebase's channel to the database and contains the JNDI lookup name for the datasource as defined in the J2EE application server. The designer then creates a number of database resources (or stored procedure resources), each one of which represents a single SQL statement (or a single call to a stored procedure). Each database resource contains a number of resource fields that represent the columns in the SQL statement. Once the database resource has been constructed, the resource fields are mapped to form fields or tables. Finally, scripting statements are used to read and write data to and from the database.

Ebase allows all of the steps above to be performed manually, but also provides tools to automate most of the process. Once the database definition has been set up and connectivity tested, database resources can then be imported directly from the database where each Ebase database resource represents a table within the database. This will import all columns of the table together with the column types and lengths. The only time it is necessary to build database resources directly is when more complex SQL is required e.g. table joins, views etc.

Once the database resource has been defined, the resource fields can then be imported directly into a form. This process will create the form fields/table columns and set the field types and lengths correctly. For example, if a numeric database field is defined with length 6 and 2 decimal digits, it is important that this information is used at presentation time to stop the user entering data that would be rejected by the database - in this example, a number with more than 6 digits are more than 2 decimal digits.

(See Working with Databases for more information)

XML

XML Resources provide full functionality for reading and writing XML documents. The XML document structure can either be imported from an existing XML schema or can be created manually using the resource. Each resource can be configured with a number of adapters that control what is done with the XML documents e.g. read and write to/from file, read and write to/from a URL etc.

(See Working with XML for more information)

Web Services

Web Service Resources provide the ability to call a Web Service and receive a response. A Web Service Resource is very similar to an XML Resource. In addition, it allows WSDL files to be imported, and provides a Web Services adapter to call the web service i.e. send a request document and receive a response document. Web Services can also be published from Ebase using the Ebase Integration Server module.

(See Working with XML for more information)

Email

An Email Resource allows an email to be sent as part of form processing. Values from form fields can be substituted into the email message, the message subject, addressees etc. The designer creates an email resource that represents a single email message. This resource can contain resource fields that are then mapped to form fields. Finally, the message is sent using the script sendmail command or the API EmailResource.sendmail() method.

The only configuration necessary to enable email processing is to set the hostname or ip address of the email server in the UFSSetup.properties file.

(See Working with Email for more information)

MQSeries

MQSeries is a software product from IBM and that facilitates connection between applications by the reading and writing of messages to and from message queues. Ebase supports two types of operation with MQSeries:

· Writing a message to a queue. In this scenario, an Ebase form collects and validates information from the end user, and then transmits it to a 3^rd party system via MQSeries. This interaction can be either synchronous or asynchronous.

· Writing a message to a queue and then reading a response message. This interaction is synchronous and can be used to connect to a 3^rd party system as an integral part of form processing e.g. for a credit check.

(See Working with MQSeries for more information)

Custom

Custom Resources are customer written Java programs, and can be used to integrate with external systems when the functionality supplied by the resources above is not sufficient.

(See Working with Custom Resources for more information)