The transport connectors handle the communication between the business system and message hubs, output services/devices, and application connectors. The need to transport messages outside a particular system node can occur, e.g. because of a process which is implemented across systems, a user or customer notification, the need to hardcopy something, or for many different reasons. In any case, the transport connector will take care of the protocol adaptation from the external protocol type to an internal HTTP based protocol.
These are the transport connectors included in IFS Connect. The links leads to the instructions on how to administrate them.
As much as the technical implementation differ between the transport connectors, they all have a common set of functionality which they provide to the applications. Transport connector can be of the type Sender that handles the Outbound messages and Reader that handles Inbound messages.
Connector Senders are used for sending messages to other business systems, message hubs, output services/devices. The need to send outbound messages occur because of a process which is implemented across systems, a user or a customer notification, a need to hardcopy something or for many different reasons. In any case, connector senders will do the Protocol adaptation which handles IFS protocol on one side, and a potentially different protocol (perhaps API based) on the other side.
All Senders are running in the J2EE server, no external server is
needed for outbound messages like notifications. Sender's native code is
executed in a separate thread utilizing concept of Application Server's
Work Managers. Thread isolation gives better possibilities for catching
possible errors and hang-ups during execution of the native code.
The Reader transport connectors are running and controlled by a
stand-alone java process called Connect Server,
an agent is listening or scanning for inbound messages. The
receivers are running as child threads to the Connect Server and
logic for restart and shutdown of the Receivers is implemented in
this server.
The communication from the Connect Server is done using HTTP or HTTPs as
internal protocol independent of what protocol that was used to communicate with
the transport connector.
The Connect Server can run many Transport Connector instances. They could also be of the same type like two different FTP readers that checks two different FTP servers for incoming messages.