BOI access through web services

A Business Object Interface (BOI) business interface of Baan IV consists of collection of related business data and the methods to access this data. On the Baan IV server, the exact implementation of the BOI is hidden and may consist of any combination of DLLs and database tables. The public interface, however, shows a standard behavior and appearance.

This public interface for BOIs is implemented in BOI proxy classes. Usually these classes are packaged together in domain packs. To access these BOI proxies from the Connector for Web Services, the domain packs, which are jar files, must be available in the classpath of the web application.

The data and functions of this public interface are described in a WSDL file.

The Connector for Web Services implements a web application to run web services with which you can access BOI business interfaces. A BOI web service performs the message-based communication with the BOI in the following way. The web service receives a SOAP message from a web client, converts this SOAP message into a BOI-specific XML message, and sends this BOI message to the server. The Baan IV application on the server forwards this message to a BOI implementation and thus invokes one of the methods of the BOI interface. The BOI interface replies by returning output for the invoked method in another BOI-specific XML message. This BOI response or result message is sent back to the web service, which converts it into a SOAP message and then forwards the SOAP message to the web client. The format of the SOAP messages that are sent to and fro are completely defined by the WSDL file of the BOI web service.

Note: For more conceptional information about BOI interfaces, see the Infor Integration 6.2 - Integration Guide for BOI Clients. Notice that the solution to create web services for BOIs discussed in this guide refers to the Web Services Toolkit of Infor Integration 6 and does not apply to the Infor Enterprise Server Connector for Web Services.