How does ActiveTransfer work with Trading Networks?

In the Software AG business-to-business (B2B) platform that includes webMethods Trading Networks, ActiveTransfer provides the managed file transfer facility while Trading Networks provides you the B2B capabilities of file (referred to as documents in Trading Networks) management and partner management, transaction monitoring, and so on.

Whether you have installed the ActiveTransfer and Trading Networks instances on the same Integration Server host (local installation) or different Integration Server hosts (remote installation), you can control B2B transactions end to end by using ActiveTransfer and Trading Networks as follows:

Configure partners only once—either in ActiveTransfer or Trading Networks. If Trading Networks is not installed, you can define your own partners when you edit virtual folders or user profiles in ActiveTransfer. If Trading Networks is installed, ActiveTransfer Server can retrieve the list of partners from Trading Networks. However, you must define the partner-user and partner-virtual folder associations separately in the two products.

Synchronization of partner information between the two products depends on the following parameter settings. For detailed information about these parameters, see Server Configuration Parameters and Variables.

mft.partners.useTNPartners. This parameter enables the use of Trading Networks partners configured in Trading Networks instead of ActiveTransfer partners.

Note:
To make any new Trading Networks partner available in ActiveTransfer, reload the WmMFT package or run the Integration Server service wm.mft.assets.partner.syncPartnerProfiles.

mft.aliases.tn. When connecting to remote Trading Networks instances, this parameter lists all the remote Trading Networks server aliases. Local installations of ActiveTransfer and Trading Networks do not require this parameter to share partner information.

mft.group.aliases. This parameter specifies the remote server aliases of ActiveTransfer nodes that are part of a group. The remote server aliases are defined in the Integration Server Administrator portal. ActiveTransfer instance shares asset information with other ActiveTransfer nodes in the group.

For instance, let us assume that you have node A and node B. Now, to configure the mft.group.aliases for node A, you must point it as mft.group.aliases=node B, excluding the node A.

Local installations of ActiveTransfer and Trading Networks instances do not require any specific configuration for file transfers to Trading Networks. In case of remote installations, ActiveTransfer requires the parameter mft.aliases.tn to send files to remote Trading Networks instances. In this parameter, specify the remote server aliases defined in Integration Server for the remote Trading Networks instances . For detailed information on mft.aliases.tn, see mft.aliases.tn.

After configuring the required parameters, you can use the Execute Trading Networks Service event action to send files to Trading Networks for document processing. For details on the Execute Trading Networks Service event action, see Executing a Trading Networks Service.

Similar to file transfers Trading Networks, only remote installations of Trading Networks instances require a specific configuration—in Trading Networks, you must specify the remote server aliases defined in Integration Server for the remote ActiveTransfer instances. For details on how to configure remote ActiveTransfer server aliases in Trading Networks, see the Trading Networks documentation.

In Trading Networks, ActiveTransfer is available as a delivery method for file transfer (or document delivery in Trading Networks). For the ActiveTransfer delivery method, the Trading Networks partner must have a virtual folder. Then, when Trading Networks triggers a file transfer, ActiveTransfer sends the file to the target location in the virtual folder without creating a local copy.

For each file sent, Trading Networks and ActiveTransfer maintain different IDs by which to identify the file transfer. To help you identify Trading Networks file transactions, ActiveTransfer logs include the Trading Networks document ID as well as the ActiveTransfer transaction ID. However, the My webMethods Server user interface only displays the ActiveTransfer transaction ID. Also, in the My webMethods Server user interface, you can identify file transactions triggered in Trading Networks by using Trading Networks (TN) as the trigger source or the Trading Networks file name. For details on how to filter and find file transaction details, see Monitoring ActiveTransfer .