A Trading Partner Agreement (TPA) is a set of parameters that you can use to govern how business documents are exchanged between two trading partners. You view and customize the TPAs using the Agreement Details screen in Trading Networks Console. For information about working with TPAs in the Trading Networks Console, see the webMethods Trading Networks Administrator’s Guide for your release.

Every TPA is uniquely identified by a Sender, Receiver, and an Agreement ID. During a transaction between trading partners, the webMethods ebXML Module uses this information to retrieve the TPAs for the initiator/sender and fulfiller/receiver in the transaction and to process the business documents exchanged. Every message that is exchanged in the webMethods ebXML Module is associated with a TPA. The TPAs provided with the webMethods ebXML Module contain a set of parameters that map to some (but not all) elements in the Service Header of a business document. The TPA parameters and the Service Header elements that the parameters map to, vary between ebXML Message Service Version 1.0 Specification and ebXML Message Service Version 2.0 Specification.

Your trading partner profiles, used in conjunction with TPAs, define how you and your trading partners exchange business documents.