Document Attributes
Trading Networks supports two types of document attributes: system attributes and custom attributes. Trading Networks defines the system attributes as listed in the following table:
System Attribute | Description |
SenderID | Identifier for the sender of a document. |
ReceiverID | Identifier for the receiver of a document. |
DocumentID | Unique identifier for a document. |
UserStatus | Status that you or a partner assign to a document (for example, Needs Approval). |
GroupID | Identifier that associates a document with other documents in a group. Grouping documents is helpful for end users doing document searches. |
ConversationID | Identifier that associates a document with other documents that are processed by a business process (also called a conversation of documents). For information about business processes, see
Business Process Definition. This identifier is only present if you are using BPM. You need to extract it from the document and add it to the document type. The transaction with the ConversationID then gets attached to the business processes. |
SignedBody | For XML documents, data that was digitally signed to create the digital signature for the document. |
Signature | For XML documents, digital signature of the document. |
You define custom document attributes. For example, if you are interested in PO numbers and total order mounts, you might define PO_Number and Total_Order_Amount custom attributes.
You tell Trading Networks to extract document attributes from documents you receive for these reasons:
To use extracted attributes as a criterion for using a particular processing rule. For example, if you want to use one processing rule if the sender is Partner A and another processing rule if the sender is Partner B, you would extract the system attribute SenderID. Or if you want to use a particular processing rule when the receiver is Partner C and the total order amount is greater than $10,000, you would extract the system attribute ReceiverID and the custom attribute Total_Order_Amount.
To perform certain processing actions that require extracted attributes. For example, if you want to deliver a document to the receiver partner, you would extract the system attribute ReceiverID. If you want to verify the digital signature of an XML document, you would extract the system attributes SignedBody and Signature.
To search for documents in
My webMethods based on extracted attributes. For example, if you want to be able to find documents that were sent by Partner A for which the total order amount is greater than $10,000, you would extract the system attribute SenderID and the custom attribute Total_Order_Amount.
If you BAM-enable
Trading Networks and you want to pass extracted attributes to
Optimize for B2B for analysis and monitoring. For example, if you want to generate a report on the purchase order quantity for a particular sender from a particular receiver, you would extract the custom attribute PO_Quantity and the system attributes SenderID and ReceiverID.