Overview

Create your own web services and share them with trading partners.

Web services are a very good solution to the problem of exchanging information with trading partners wherever near real-time behavior is needed (inventory status, availability to promise) or where the data is not covered by a strongly adopted standard. Using GXS Enterprise Gateway, you can implement web services interfaces and control them using the same infrastructure you use of manage traditional document-oriented electronic commerce.

GXS Enterprise Gateway is an industry leading business-to-business messaging broker. Traditionally, it is integrated to one or more internal systems that need to be able to send and receive information to trading partners. In a typical configuration, the majority of a company’s major trading partners will be set up with appropriate contact information, security configurations, and data formats.

Because the GXS Enterprise Gateway server is built on top of the Integration Server technology from Software AG, it is capable of exposing any capability it has as a web service, period. This means that once you have hooked up your inventory system to your GXS Enterprise Gateway, you have the potential to offer access to that service via SOAP—secured and audited by the same broker you use for all of your other e-commerce transactions.

In practice, there is—or should be—more to it than this. Many of the interfaces may be too “document oriented” to be helpful as web services (a “client” would basically have to submit a properly formatted document—just as the broker does), but additional features of the gateway provide a better alternative. If you understand how you would like a trading partner to interact (i.e., what information you want them to provide, and to receive in return), you can develop a service within the GXS Enterprise Gateway that meets that specification. Using GUI tools, it is possible to both develop the service and to link it to the existing, more “document oriented” service to gain access to the back end system. Not quite as simple as clicking a checkbox—but far more efficient than creating and maintaining a new integration point!

Benefits

GXS Enterprise Gateway allows you to introduce web services to your trading partners without building a brand new, but redundant, B2B administration system. Enterprise Gateway:

• Provides economies of scale for B2B integration
• Offers single, proven infrastructure for managing and securing all B2B with trading partners
• Enables the use of GUI development tools to facilitate reuse, while providing cutting edge capabilities to trading partners

Product List

• Enterprise Gateway