IOS Services
IOS provides three important services, Data, Drill, and Transaction. Following is a high-level overview of the job of each service. More details about each appear in later sections.
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Data: Provides dynamic, read-only access to Lawson data.
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Drill: Supports the Lawson Drill-Around Lawson feature.
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Transaction: The transaction processing engine for IOS.
Broker/Agent Framework
Architecturally, IOS makes use of a Broker/Agent Framework to handle request processing and to manage the life cycle of the Data, Transaction, and Drill services.
The diagram above shows the broker-agent framework. Following are definitions of the framework components:
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Router: Receives inbound HTTP requests and sends them to the appropriate broker.
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Broker: Recognizes requests that require processing by more than one agent and gathers them into a single response to return to the client. When a request does not require processing by more than one agent, the agent handles the request and the broker serves merely as a pass-through.
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Agent: Processes requests. An agent can be thought of as a sub-servlet, because it performs the job of a servlet but only when processing requests to the services Data, Drill, and Transaction.
In general, Router receives HTTP requests from a Lawson Portal user and forwards them to the appropriate service where they are processed. Data from completed requests is sent back to Router to be converted back to HTTP and displayed in the user's browser.
API Calls to IOS Services from External Consumers
IOS services provide a safe method for external consumers to query Lawson data. These queries could be, for example, an API call to Data embedded in a customer-developed report or a customized application that extends the capability of a Lawson form. Queries retain data security policies and other application-defined rules.
Data, Drill, and Transaction each have required and optional parameters which are described in detail in the IOS API documentation.