B2B Integration 10.4 | Administering and Monitoring B2B Transactions | Trading Networks Administrator's Guide | Understanding webMethods Trading Networks | Understanding the Trading Networks Terminology
 
Understanding the Trading Networks Terminology
webMethods Trading Networks is a component that runs on webMethods Integration Server. Trading Networks enables your enterprise to link with other companies (buyers, suppliers, strategic partners) and marketplaces to form a business-to-business network.
The components of Trading Networks are a server and the My webMethods interface. The My webMethods interface is a web-based administration and monitoring user interface for managing your My webMethods components.
Trading Networks terminology and description are listed in the table as follows:
Term
Description
Activity Log
A log that Trading Networks maintains to record the activity that occurs within the Trading Networks system. Trading Networks records entries, for example, when you manage trading partner information, when it processes documents, and when you perform administrative tasks.
Business Process
A multi-step interaction among participating systems, people, and trading partners. A business process can be fully automated (involve only interaction among computer systems) or include varying degrees of human interaction (for example, review and approval steps). It can be either brief or long-running.
Custom Attribute
A document attribute that you define to identify information within a document that is of interest to you.
Deliver
Sending an outbound document from Trading Networks to the trading partner that is the receiver of the document.
Delivery Method
A method for delivering a document to a trading partner. For example HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, FTPS, e-mail (SMTP), SFTP, Web Service. Trading Networks supports, immediate delivery methods, scheduled delivery methods, receiver's preferred delivery method, and queue for polling.
Delivery Task
A task that Trading Networks establishes to keep track of the attempts to re-deliver a document when it is using reliable delivery.
Document
A business document (For example, purchase order, acknowledgement, confirmation) sent to Trading Networks. The document can be in any format (XML, EDI, etc.) Trading Networks provides out-of-the-box support for XML and flat file documents. The webMethods EDI Module is necessary for EDI documents.
Document Attribute
A Trading Networks object that defines a piece of information within a document that is of interest. For example, document attributes in a purchase order might be the purchase order number, the account number of the purchase order and the total purchase amount. Document attributes can be either a system attributes (those that are provided with Trading Networks) or custom attributes (those that you define for your enterprise).
Document ID
A system attribute for an identifier in a document that is typically a unique value that distinguishes a document from other versions of the same document.
Endpoint
An endpoint is one end of a communication channel. A specific call or transaction can be made on an API by an application through an API endpoint.
Enterprise Partner
The partner that hosts the trading network. On your Trading Networks system, this would typically be your corporation. (Also known as the hub, local partner, or sponsor.)
External ID
The value of the external ID type within a document. For example, if the external ID type is a D-U-N-S number, the external ID is the actual value of the D-U-N-S number.
Flat File
Any file or document that has a format that is non-describing, that is, a document that does not contain metadata. A flat file document presents hierarchical data in a record-based storage format, which unlike XML, does not embed structural information within the data.
Immediate Delivery Method
A delivery method where Trading Networks attempts to immediately deliver a document directly to the receiving partner. You can create immediate delivery methods using all the supported delivery methods.
Local Partner
The enterprise partner that hosts Trading Networks. (Also known as the enterprise partner, hub or sponsor.)
Private Queue
A scheduled delivery queue that you define to schedule the delivery of documents that are aimed at one specific trading partner. You define a private queue in the profile of the partner to receive the documents.
Processing Rule
A Trading Networks object that contains a set of actions that determine how Trading Networks is to process an inbound document and criteria that indicates when to select a processing rule for an incoming document.
Profile
A Trading Networks object that contains a summary of information about a corporation that is part of a trading network. A profile contains standard fields that Trading Networks provides and extended fields that are site-defined.
Public Queue
A scheduled delivery queue that you define to schedule the delivery of documents that are aimed at multiple trading partners.
Reliable Delivery
A feature of Trading Networks where Trading Networks attempts to re-deliver a document to a trading partner one or more times if previous attempts to deliver the document fails. For an immediate delivery method, Trading Networks automatically uses reliable delivery when the pre-processing action Save Document to Database indicates that Trading Networks is to save the document content to its database. For a scheduled delivery method, Trading Networks always uses reliable delivery.
Scheduled Delivery Method
A delivery method where Trading Networks batches multiple documents in a scheduled delivery queue. The documents in the queue are acted on at scheduled times to deliver them.
Trading Networks Document Type
A Trading Networks object that defines how Trading Networks is to recognize a document and initial actions to take on a recognized document. Trading Networks recognizes the document by using identification information in the TN document type. The actions specified in a TN document type indicate the document attributes that Trading Networks is to extract from the document (including information about XML namespaces the documents might use) and specify options for pre-processing the document (which include verification, validation, and whether to save the document attributes, document content, and log entries for the document to the database).
Trading Partner Agreement
A Trading Networks object that you can use to tailor how documents are exchanged between two trading partners.
Trading Partner
A trading partner may be an organization in your trading network, for example, a strategic partner, marketplaces, buyer, or supplier. Each trading partner requires a profile. You can exchange business documents with the trading partners in your network to relay mission critical production information.
Transaction
The documents that have passed through Trading Networks.
Unknown Document
A document that does not match any Trading Networks document type.
Unknown Partner
A trading partner (sender or receiver) of a document is considered unknown if Trading Networks is unable to determine the sender or receiver; that is match the sender or receiver to a profile in the Trading Networks system.
User Status
A system attribute that contains a status that a user can associate with a document. For example, "Needs Approval".

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