Understanding IBM webMethods B2B

Overview

The IBM webMethods B2B is IBM’s secure, format-neutral, business-document gateway that recognizes and processes documents that are exchanged between partners. Through IBM webMethods B2B, you can exchange business documents with the partners in your network to relay production information.

IBM webMethods B2B allows you to create a B2B network, which is a group of organizations that have agreed to exchange business documents. Participant organizations might include strategic partners, buyers, suppliers, and marketplaces (for example, Ariba Network). These participant organizations are referred to as partners.

Business documents that partners typically exchange include purchase orders, order statuses, purchase order acknowledgements, invoices, and other domain-specific documents. IBM webMethods B2B enables your corporation to connect to other organizations to form a business-to-business (B2B) network.

IBM webMethods B2B does not require that all partners in the network use IBM webMethods B2B or IBM software. Each of your partners could use their software to communicate with your instance of IBM webMethods B2B. If you have buyers, suppliers, or strategic partners who use other software, you can add them to your network by creating partner profiles for each of them. Partner profiles contain information about connecting to the partners and sharing information.

In the following figure, the partner in the center is referred to as the hub of the network or the enterprise partner. The other partners are referred to as spokes. The hub hosts the network and the spokes participate by interacting with the hub. A partner does not have to be exclusively a hub or a spoke; it can be both. It can be a hub of its network and a spoke in another partner’s network.

hub and spoke model diagram

IBM webMethods B2B satisfies the following business needs:

Complete life-cycle management of business documents.
Complete monitoring and tracking of a single transaction in an orchestrated environment.

Understanding the Terminology

The following table lists all the terms associated with IBM webMethods B2B.

Term	Description
Activities	A log that IBM webMethods B2B maintains to record the activities that occur within IBM webMethods B2B. Modifications, updates, activities related to document exchange are typical entries on the Summary page for Transactions. For example, an activity entry is made when you modify partner information, or when IBM webMethods B2B processes documents, or when you perform administrative tasks.
Channel	A channel forms the basis of communication in IBM webMethods B2B. It encompasses a variety of underlying protocols such as HTTP, AS2, and so on to facilitate document exchange. All transactions among partners therefore leverage the underlying transport and exchange capabilities of channels.
Comment	Add or update a comment associated with the document. For example, if multiple users are responsible for handling documents that have processing errors, you might want to add comments to indicate that you are working on resolving an issue and the steps that you have taken.
Outbound Channel	A method for delivering a document to a partner. For example, deliver a document using HTTP. IBM webMethods B2B supports delivery by using the receiver’s preferred outbound channel.
Business Document	A business document (for example, purchase order, acknowledgement, confirmation) sent to IBM webMethods B2B. Define exactly one type of business document for each document you expect to receive or send.
Enterprise	An enterprise is a special partner typically representing a corporation, also known as the hub, local partner, or sponsor.
Functional Acknowledgment	A functional acknowledgement (FA) is a transaction set sent by the receiver of an EDI transmission to the sender, acknowledging that the message has been received and its syntax is acceptable. Functional acknowledgements do not indicate that the document has been processed by the receiver. Functional acknowledgements are generated only for inbound documents from a trading partner. Functional acknowledgements are not created when a document submission is internally tested using the Test Document feature, or when a document is submitted to IBM webMethods B2B by an integration.
Inbound Channel	A method for receiving a document from a partner.
Identity	The value of the identity type within a document. Several identity types are available in IBM webMethods B2B. For example, if the identity type is a DUNS number, the identity is the actual value of the DUNS number. For more information about managing identities, see Managing ID Types.
Profile	A IBM webMethods B2B object that contains a summary of information about a corporation that is part of a B2B network. A profile holds details about a corporation such as identities, connections, certificates, contacts, and addresses.
Partner User	A partner user is an entity authorized to send business documents in IBM webMethods B2B.
Processing Rules	A IBM webMethods B2B object that contains a set of actions that determine how IBM webMethods B2B must process an inbound document with specific the criteria.
Partner	A partner is a participant organization in your B2B network. It could be a strategic partner, marketplace, buyer, or supplier. Each partner requires a profile. You can exchange business documents with the partners in your network to relay mission-critical production information.
Preferred Outbound Channel	A partner’s preferred protocol through which it wants to receive documents in IBM webMethods B2B.
Reprocess	When you reprocess a document, you send the document back through the processing rules. For example, the document is processed again if it was processed by a wrong processing rule. Note If you reprocess a document for which the document attributes were not saved, the document does not match with the processing rules that use that criteria. Instead, the document matches with another processing rule, such as the Default rule, and performs the processing actions defined in that rule.
Resubmit	When you resubmit a document, you send the document to IBM webMethods B2B as a new document. For example, you might resubmit a document when the document does not match any type of business document. When you edit a document and resubmit it, IBM webMethods B2B creates a new instance of the document, and continues to process it while the original document remains unchanged.
Service execution	Call an integration that is designed using IBM webMethods Integration or any other integration software. You can use one of the service execution modes listed below to call an integration Synchronous. Before performing the rest of the processing actions, IBM webMethods B2B waits for the service to complete before returning to the caller that sent the document for processing. You can further track this type of service execution result in the Course of transaction section. Asynchronous. IBM webMethods B2B continues with the remaining processing actions immediately. If there are no subsequent processing actions, IBM webMethods B2B returns to the caller that sent the document for processing. You can further track this type of service execution result in the Course of transaction section. Reliable. The Reliable execution mode allows IBM webMethods B2B to automatically retry failed integrations by creating a task to track the completion. When IBM webMethods B2B attempts to execute an integration and if the integration execution fails, IBM webMethods B2B retries the integration execution subsequently until it succeeds or until the maximum retry limit. If the integration execution reaches the maximum retry limit without succeeding, IBM webMethods B2B marks the integration execution task as failed .
Tasks	IBM webMethods B2B creates tasks internally to monitor service execution (if the service execution mode is set to Reliable) or for delivering the document by using receiver’s preferred outbound channel.
Transaction	An end-to-end business-to-business document exchange corresponds to a transaction in IBM webMethods B2B. Irrespective of the type of documents, channels used, a transaction is a neutral runtime aspect of a business-to-business document exchange flow.
Validators	Different types of validators are available to validate records, composites, and fields of a business document. You can validate: Records and composites using conditional validators. Fields using either length or code list validators.

Lifecycle of B2B Assets

The assets you create on IBM webMethods B2B are referred to as B2B assets. These assets undergo transitions in a specific manner as depicted in the following image.

Lifecycle of b2b assets

Enterprise Profile

An enterprise is a special partner that typically represents a corporation, also known as the hub, local partner, or sponsor.

Click Set up my B2B Enterprise on the welcome screen to open the guided wizard to set up the enterprise.

You can only modify details of an enterprise profile but cannot delete it.

flow of activities in IBM webMethods B2B Cloud

Channels

A channel forms the basis of communication in IBM webMethods B2B. It encompasses a variety of underlying protocols such as HTTP, AS2, and so on to facilitate document exchange. All transactions among partners therefore leverage the underlying transport and exchange capabilities of channels.

Important

All AS2 and AS4 communications are Drummond ^TM certified in IBM webMethods B2B.

Inbound channels. Operates by listening to any inbound communication. The B2B enterprise receives documents on all the endpoint URLs you created.

Outbound channels. Sends the document to the intended partners in IBM webMethods B2B. A partner must have a preferred outbound channel through which it prefers to receive documents.

Channels performs certain validations on receiving a document:

Is the user valid?
Does a partner-user association still exist for this document?
Is the document sent to the right inbound channel endpoint?

The following table lists the channel capabilities:

Intention	Activity
If the partner needs to only receive documents from IBM webMethods B2B	Create an outbound channel and associate it with the partner. The partner must have a preferred outbound channel.
If the partner needs to only send documents to IBM webMethods B2B	Create a partner user for the partner and associate the partner user with an inbound channel. Sending a document to IBM webMethods B2B requires the partner user’s credentials to authenticate the document exchange. Note Barring the SFTP-IN channel, you can make all other channel types Partner-specific. If sender information is not available in the payload, and when the document is submitted using a partner-specific channel, then the sender information is retrieved using the channel-partner association. If the receiver information is not available in the payload, and the document is submitted using partner-specific channel, then the enterprise is considered as the receiver. For details on how to make a channel partner-specific, see Creating a Channel.

Intention

Activity

If the partner needs to only receive documents from IBM webMethods B2B

Create an outbound channel and associate it with the partner. The partner must have a preferred outbound channel.

If the partner needs to only send documents to IBM webMethods B2B

Create a partner user for the partner and associate the partner user with an inbound channel.
Sending a document to IBM webMethods B2B requires the partner user’s credentials to authenticate the document exchange.

Note

Barring the SFTP-IN channel, you can make all other channel types Partner-specific.
If sender information is not available in the payload, and when the document is submitted using a partner-specific channel, then the sender information is retrieved using the channel-partner association.
If the receiver information is not available in the payload, and the document is submitted using partner-specific channel, then the enterprise is considered as the receiver. For details on how to make a channel partner-specific, see Creating a Channel.

Partner Profiles

A partner profile holds details about a corporation such as identities, connections, certificates, contacts, and addresses.

Partners can send and receive documents to IBM webMethods B2B for processing. After processing documents using processing rules, the business documents are delivered as defined in the processing rule.

In IBM webMethods B2B, users associated with the partner are the entities that authenticate a document exchange.

To create a partner profile, you must minimally define an identity for that partner. An identity primarily identifies a partner in IBM webMethods B2B. The combination of identity type and identity value must always be unique for a partner.

You can add as many partner profiles as you want. IBM recommends that you keep this information up to date.

Important

IBM webMethods B2B does not process or utilize any personal information (email ID, role, address, telephone details and so on) for any purpose.

Partner Users

IBM webMethods B2B accepts and processes the documents from a partner only if it has a user associated with it. The user credentials of a partner user are used to authenticate a business document exchange in IBM webMethods B2B.

Business Documents

Business documents are documents that you and your trading partners exchange. For example, purchase order, acknowledgment, confirmation, and so on. A business document specifies criteria that an inbound document must meet to match the document type, document attributes to extract from documents that match, and processing actions to perform for those documents. You must define at least one document type for each document you receive or send.

IBM webMethods B2B supports the following types of documents:

EDI documents IBM webMethods B2B supports a comprehensive list of leading industry-standard EDI documents using a single click. You can choose from a variety of EDI documents such as X12, UNEDIFACT, and so on, to receive or send business documents from your partners depending on the standard, version, and transaction type. The default documents that appear on a new instance of IBM webMethods B2B are a list of group, envelope, and other native EDI documents.

XML documents IBM webMethods B2B supports XML documents. You can use an XML document to define the structure of a document that is created from an XML node. You can define different types of XML documents. For example, you might define documents that represent purchase orders or acknowledgments. For XML documents, you define variations of documents; for example, you might define purchase orders in cXML, OAG, and CBL.

Flat File documents IBM webMethods B2B supports Flat File documents. You can add, identify, process, and optionally validate them.

Channel-Partner-User Association

Processing Rules

Processing rules specify how you want IBM webMethods B2B to process the inbound documents and the specific actions to take after a document matches with the specified criteria. For example, you might want IBM webMethods B2B to execute an integration defined in that rule and then deliver the document to the receiver that is identified in the document using the receiver’s preferred outbound channel.

For each document that IBM webMethods B2B is to process, it performs a processing rule lookup to determine which processing rule to use. It does this in the sequence of the processing rules that you specified on the Processing rules page. IBM webMethods B2B matches information from the document with the criteria you specify. After IBM webMethods B2B locates a matching processing rule based on the criteria, it performs the pre-processing actions you defined for that rule and performs the actions that you specify in the matching processing rule.

When an inbound document arrives, IBM webMethods B2B recognizes the type of business document, and extracts the sender ID and receiver ID attributes. After which the extracted sender and receiver attributes are matched with the list of existing partners.

When a document is to be processed, IBM webMethods B2B matches the sender with the sender specified within the document being sent. IBM webMethods B2B uses the sender identified within the document to look up the sender’s profile to ensure that a valid partner user is associated with the partner to send the document.

processing rule diagram

Monitoring Transactions

An end-to-end business-to-business document exchange corresponds to a transaction in IBM webMethods B2B. Irrespective of the type of documents, channels used, a transaction is a neutral runtime aspect of a business-to-business document exchange flow.

You can search, view, and monitor transactions using the simple search capabilities.

Monitoring enables you to:

Track transaction information about the documents that your IBM webMethods B2B has sent, received, or delivered.
Track transactions created as part of an integration where one transaction may generate many transactions for its end-to-end completion and subsequently monitor them in the Course of transaction section of the Transaction summary page.
Search for a specific transaction.
Resubmit and reprocess a transaction.
Edit and resubmit the content of a document.
Add a comment to a transaction.
View the attributes for a document.
View all related transactions in a single group.
Download a precise list of live transactions by applying search filters.

IBM webMethods B2B provides better availability support for the product and infrastructure. This allows having multiple replicas for paid tenants. This capability ensures a new processing node is assigned as soon as the current processing node fails.
Note that this is only a high availability support and not failover support. This means that the transactions in-flight may fail and those may need to be resubmitted or reprocessed. Any new transactions will be successfully processed on the newly assigned node.

Large Document Handling

When processing the business documents, IBM webMethods B2B loads the content of a document in its memory. For large documents, this may lead to memory constraints. These constraints are noticeable when IBM webMethods B2B runs a query on EDI or XML documents during the document recognition or when it tries to perform pre-processing or processing actions.

IBM webMethods B2B removes these constraints with a process to handle large documents. It saves the content of large documents in a temporary space, reads the content in fragments, and processes the document by retrieving a specified number of bytes as configured in the Runtime options.

When large document handling is enabled in your tenant, you must configure the property Large document threshold in IBM webMethods B2B > Settings > Runtime options > General > Large Document Handling.

Specify when IBM webMethods B2B must consider a document as a large document. When IBM webMethods B2B receives a document that matches the specification, it processes the document as a large document.

Enabling Large Document Handling

To enable the IBM webMethods B2B large document handling feature, contact IBM support team.

Defining Size for Large Documents

The threshold limit for a large document is defined below:

Maximum limit: A document is considered large if it exceeds 31457280 bytes (30 MB). IBM webMethods B2B supports the payload up to 500 MB.
Minimum limit: Any document at least 1048576 bytes (1 MB) can be considered large. You must configure the value you want in the Runtime options.
Default Value: The default value is 5242880 bytes (5MB).

You must also set the Query threshold, which is the maximum size of the payload IBM webMethods B2B reads to run the queries defined in an XML or EDI document type.

For more information, see Configuring Runtime Options.

Channel for Large Documents

When IBM webMethods B2B large document handling is enabled in your tenant, two endpoint URLs for the inbound channel appear.

For more information, see Creating a Channel.

Points to Note

When you call an integration from IBM webMethods B2B to IBM webMethods Integration, the content for the large document is null. To view the content of the large document, you must call getTransactionContentParts from IBM webMethods B2B operations in IBM webMethods Integration.
You must set the contentType in submit operation to application/EDI for VDA payloads.
IBM recommends that you use application/EDIStream for Large documents for the contentType in submit operation.
Operations convertDocumentToEDIMessage, convertEDIMessageToDocument, and processEnvelope support the processing of large documents. For more information about detailed changes for large documents in EDI connector.
In the webMethods.io B2B Connector:
- For the addTransactionContentPart operation, you must set the input parameter readContentAs as type stream for a payload over 5 MB.
- For the submit operation, you must set the input parameter readContentAs as type stream for a payload over 5 MB.
IBM recommends you not to submit multiple large documents simultaneously for processing.

Important

All the enhancements in webMethods.io B2B Connector will work as expected with IBM webMethods Integration with Connector Monthly Releases (CMR) 36.

Limitations

IBM does not provide a IBM webMethods Cloud Container support for large-document handling.
You cannot view and download the content of the large document through Partner Portal.
EDI transaction size must not exceed 50 MB.
When a large EDI payload is submitted with the Validate document structure enabled in IBM webMethods B2B, you might receive a timeout error if there is no response from IBM webMethods Integration within 5 minutes.
IBM webMethods B2B does not support:
- the validation for XML and flat file large documents.
- the verification of the digital signature for XML large documents.
- the processing and re-processing of cXML documents as large documents.
  
  Workaround: Change the value configured in the Large document threshold field as per the cXML payload size or higher, and re-process the document.
- EDI standards VDA and Tradacoms for large documents.