TPAs
You can define trading partner agreements (TPAs) for pairs of partners. Each TPA contains specific information about how documents should be exchanged between two trading partners, as follows:
The partner that represents the sender of the documents.
The partner that represents the receiver of the documents.
An agreement ID that identifies the type of TPA (for example, TPAs for the
webMethods Module for EDI use the agreement ID EDITPA).
The
TPA data that contains the application-specific variables to use to tailor the processing of documents exchanged between the sender and receiver. You specify this data by defining an
IS document type. An IS document type is an element in the
Integration Server namespace that contains a set of fields that define the structure and type of data in an IS document, or IData object. For example, the
webMethods Module for EDI ships with an IS document type (the wm.b2b.editn.TPA:EDITPA IS document type) to use for TPAs for partners exchanging EDI documents. This IS document type contains a set of variables that are used for processing EDI documents.
Optionally, an initialization service you supply to initialize the TPA data (for example, the
webMethods Module for EDI supplies an initialization service to set the TPA values to its default values).
Optionally, a validation service you supply to validate the data added to the IS document for the TPA.
Optionally, an export service you supply to export the TPA data to an industry-standard format.
Trading Networks does not use TPAs for its own processing; rather, the data you specify in the TPA are available for your own use. For example, you can access the TPA information from services that are executed by a processing rule. Access to this information allows you to build a document exchange application that uses the TPA to tailor the exchange of documents between partners. Other webMethods products take advantage of the TPA feature in Trading Networks. For example, the webMethods ebXML Module uses the TPA feature to support ebXML Collaboration Protocol Agreements (CPAs).
The set of parameters can be different for different types of TPAs. For example, you might use TPAs for partners that exchange documents using ebXML that contain the parameters defined by the webMethods ebXML Module. Other partners might exchange documents using EDI, and for those partners you create TPAs that contain parameters defined by the webMethods Module for EDI.
The type of information a TPA contains is different than the type of information that Trading Networks maintains in profiles. A profile contains information about the partner that does not vary with each document being exchanged, such as company name and address, certificate information, delivery protocol parameters, and external IDs. TPAs are intended to contain transaction-dependent information (for example, configuration information to support specific types of documents being exchanged) that are specific to a group of transactions between the two trading partners (for example, digital signature or encryption to a message). TPAs augments profiles and offer a flexible way to process and manage the documents exchanged between two trading partners.
When you define a TPA, you set the agreement status. This status indicates the status of the TPA agreement between the receiver and sender. The status can be proposed, agreed, or disabled. webMethods products that use the TPA feature recognize these statuses. For example, if webMethods ebXML Module tries to use a TPA whose status is disabled, it acts as if there is no TPA. If you create an application that uses TPAs, it should check and honor the disabled status.
