Business Document Mapper overview

Business Document Mapper is used to create and deploy mappings. On a high level, a mapping is a description of how to transform or translate messages or documents sent between internal and external resources. On a detailed level, a mapping is an XML file expressing a transformation between input and output elements, and attribute structures defined by XML schemas representing the input and output messages and documents. Business Document Mapper provides the capabilities to define mappings, for example, for OAGIS BODs, EDI, EBS, financial messages, and others.

Mappings are organized in projects. These projects can contain new or imported mappings. To define the transformation, we use a graphical editor called Mapping Editor.

In the Mapping Editor, the left and right panes show the elements and attributes of the input (left) and output (right) schemas as tree structures. The middle pane shows the transformation expressed as a sequence of connected mapping elements that are categorized as functions, variables, or constants. An empty mapping has a blank middle pane.

After a mapping is completed, deploy the mapping to the Mapper Server runtime environment. Deployment is the process of publishing a mapping to a Mapper Server. The Mapper Server stores the mapping in a Mapper Database and generates a runtime Java class. The Mapper Server uses activated runtime Java classes for message translation. Mappings can also be imported to the mapper from the Mapper Database via the Mapper Server.

This diagram shows the interaction among Business Document Mapper, database, server, and messages:

In this scenario, the Business Document Mapper can help you achieve two tasks:

• Create mappings.

  • Select predefined functions or create new user-defined functions to map elements and attributes in the input schema to a number of input parameters in the functions.

    The output from the functions is mapped to the elements and attributes according to the output schema.

  • A completed mapping is internally saved in XML format, that is the .map file.

    The file contains all the information needed by the Mapper Server runtime environment.

    You can also import custom JARs to the mapping and use Java classes stored in the custom JARs in the mapping.

• Deploy mappings to the Mapper Server.

  • Publish the mapping to a Mapper Server. The Mapper Server stores the mapping in the Mapper Database and generates a runtime Java class. The custom JARs are also stored in the Mapper Database.

  • User-defined Java classes in custom JARs can be reused in multiple mappings.