Overview of SeeBeyond for the BizTalk professional
The SeeBeyond e*Gate integrator is the core of the platform. The e*Gate Integrator enables the flow of information by providing connectivity to applications and datastores across a network. You can loosely think of them as a BizTalk 2006 Application than encompasses all the different artifacts. e*Gate is based on a distributed architecture with an open design that deploys load balancing options. e*Gate processes events according to user-defined business logic and integrates business processes between applications, ensuring end-to-end data flow into back-office systems.
The record structures of messages (called Events in SeeBeyond) that are transferred to and fro are called an "Object Type Definition" (OTD). OTDs are created from source types and can represent any record type, e.g. XML, BAPI, Flat File, Relational row, WSDL, etc. You can think of them as the canonical type definition used by the platform - or schemas in the BizTalk World. The OTD is a Java class. It does all the marshalling/unmarshalling to these various formats.
e*Way are key components of an e*Gate and provide application connectivity and data processing such as business collaborations, transformation logic, and publish/subscribe. They comprise of an executable and a configuration file. You can think of e*Ways as a combination of adapters and ports and their binding information. e*Way connections are analogous to BizTalk ports.
e*Ways have “External Slice” components which is analogous to the communications adapter and the “Work Slice” which can be thought of as an application adapter and some business logic.
Both BizTalk and SeeBeyond support wide accepted standards like XML, XSD, WDSL, SOAP, BPEL4WS and are geared towards messaging and loosely coupled integration. While the integration goals are the same, SeeBeyond has taken a different architectural approach than BizTalk. For example, SeeBeyond does not have a central MessageBox where all messages are delivered and which acts as the subscription engine (although it does have smaller and more numerous Intelligent Queues). SeeBeyond does not insist on XML conversion of Flat File messages (through a pre-processing disassembler).
SeeBeyond eBusiness Integration Suite
The SeeBeyond eBusiness Integration Suite includes the following components and sub-components:
· e*Gate Integrator:
· e*Way Intelligent Adapters
· IQ Intelligent Queues
· Business Object Brokers (BOBs)
· e*Insight Business Process Manager
· e*Xchange Partner Manager
· eSecurity Manager
· e*Index Global Identifier
A one to one comparison of artifacts will probably of much greater help:
| Architectural Parallels between BizTalk and SeeBeyond | |
| BizTalk | SeeBeyond |
| Messaging / routing | Collaboration (data routing) |
| Schema | Structure |
| BizTalk NT Service | E*Gate Registry Service |
| Host Instances | Participating hosts in a Control Broker |
| BizTalk Host | Registry Host |
| BizTalk Administration Console | E*Gate Enterprise Manager GUI |
| Group Hub / Health and Activity Tracking | E*Gate Monitor GUI |
| MessageBox | IQ (Intelligent Queue) datastore – different from MessageBox and is a very loose parallel |
| Immutablity of messages | Events are mutable even inside a IQ |
| Adapter | E*Way |
| Send and Receive Ports | E*Way Connections |
| BOB (Internal e*Gate component used for load balancing) | |
| BizTalk Application | E*Gate |
| Binding file (very loose analogy) | Schema (The parameters and relationships between e*Gate components) |
| Orchestrations | E*Insight BPM (Business Process Manager) |
| Pipelines | (no equivalent) No distict pre-processor artifact, although pre-processing can be impleted in code |
| Visual Studio IDE | SeeBeyond uses its own IDE unlike BizTalk which uses the common .NET IDE Visual Studio. Although SeeBeyond can be coded in J2EE, it does not provide Developer Tools that can be installed as plug-ins for standard IDEs like the Eclipse, Jbuilder, Java Studio Creator, etc. |
| Pub/sub managed by MessageAgent from the MessageBox | Events are published by Collaboration. The Subscription is by the EventType and the Publisher. |
| Business Rules / Policies | Property file – can be changed at runtime. Rules xan also be in the database |
| (no equivalent) – although Group Hub can add more MessageBoxes | IQ Manager controls IQs |
| Content Based Routing | Eventy Types / Collaboration Rules |
| Trading Partner Management | e*Xchange Partner Manager |
| Implemented in .NET Security infrastructure, PKI certificates | eSecurity Manager |
| Business Activity Services | e*Index Global Identifier (e*Index) |
| No direct analogy – implemented in BizTalk Group / Clustering | Business Object Broker (BOB) |
| BTS Management Database | e*Gate Registry |
| Port | E*Way Connnection |