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Before we jump into the AIA Enterprise Business Message (EBM) standards, let us understand a little more about Business Messages. In general, Business Message is information shared between people, organizations, systems, or processes. Any information communicated to any object in a standard understandable format are called messages.

In the application integration world, there are various information-sharing approaches that are followed. Therefore, we need not go through it again, but in a service-oriented environment, message-sharing between systems is the fundamental characteristic. There should be a standard approach followed across an enterprise, so that every existing or new business system could understand and follow the uniform method. XML technology is a widely-accepted message format by all the technologies and tools.

Oracle AIA framework provides a standard messaging format to share the information between AIA components.

Overview of Enterprise Business Message (EBM)

Enterprise Business Messages (EBMs) are business information exchanged between enterprise business systems as messages. EBMs define the elements that are used to form the messages in service-oriented operations. EBM payloads represent specific content of an EBO that is required to perform a specific service. In an AIA infrastructure, EBMs are messages exchanged between all components in the Canonical Layer. Enterprise Business Services (EBS) accepts EBM as a request message and responds back to EBM as an output payload. However, in Application Business Connector Service (ABCS), the provider ABCS accepts messages in the EBM format and translates them into the application provider's Application Business Message (ABM) format. Alternatively, the requester ABCS receives ABM as a request message, transforms it into an EBS, and calls the EBS to submit the EBM message. Therefore, EBM has been a widely-accepted message standard within AIA components.

The context-oriented EBMs are built using a set of common components and EBO business components. Some EBMs may require more than one EBO to fulfill the business integration needs. The following diagram describes the role of an EBM in the AIA architecture:

EBM characteristics

The fundamentals of EBM and its characteristics are as follows:

• Each business service request and response should be represented in an EBM format using a unique combination of an action and an EBO instance.
• One EBM can support only one action or verb.
• EBM component should import the common component to make use of metadata and data types across the EBM structure.
• EBMs are application interdependencies. Any requester application that invokes Enterprise Business Services (EBS) through ABCS should follow the EBM format standards to pass as payload in integration.
• The action that is embedded in the EBM is the only action that sender or requester application can execute to perform integration.
• The action in the EBM may also carry additional data that has to be done as part of service execution. For example, the update action may carry information about whether the system should notify after successful execution of update.
• The information that exists in the EBM header is common to all EBMs. However, information existing in the data area and corresponding actions are specific to only one EBM.
• EBM headers may carry tracking information, auditing information, source and target system information, and error-handling information.
• EBM components do not rely on the underlying transport protocol. Any service protocols such as HTTP, HTTPs, SMTP, SOAP, and JMS should carry EBM payload documents.

Exploring AIA EBMs

We explored the physical structure of the Oracle AIA EBO in the previous chapter; EBMs do not have a separate structure. EBMs are also part of the EBO's physical package structure. Every EBO is bound with an EBM. The following screenshot will show the physical structure of the EBM groups as directories:

As EBOs are grouped as packages based on the business model, EBMs are also a part of that structure and can be located along with the EBO schema under the Core EBO package.