2.4 Trading Partners
Trading partners are an optional feature of LANSA Composer. They are particularly useful for organizing files into directories (typically for inbound and outbound transport), for sharing common Activities and Processing Sequences with different source and target locations by using variable inputs associated with the trading partner and for performing iterative processing.
Trading partners may be registered and transport Configurations and Transformation Maps linked to the trading partner. A directory structure may be used where each trading partner has a group of directories used for different types of files. This gives a structure to the data that makes for easier and better management of the multitude of files.
In addition, application-specific properties of trading partner may be globally defined and values for those properties entered for each trading partner. This makes the trading partner functionality extensible to accommodate custom requirements.
The trading partner information may be referenced at run-time (in a Processing Sequence) in two ways:
- When processing is being performed for a particular trading partner, the trading partner attributes and properties, the linked directories, Transformation Maps and/or Configurations can be accessed through built-in variables and used as variable inputs to the Activities and Transformation Maps to be executed.
- A Processing Sequence may contain a loop based on the built-in *TRADINGPARTNERS variable to iteratively perform the same processing for all defined trading partners.
For more information on dynamically accessing trading partner variables in your processing sequence, refer to Using the Trading Partner Built-in Variables.
The trading partner features may not be necessary or applicable in all cases.
Also see
2.4.1 Work With Trading Partners
2.4.4 Trading Partner Properties
2.4.5 Trading Partner Data Interchange Attributes
2.4.6 Link Directories to a Trading Partner
2.4.7 Link Transformation Maps to a Trading Partner
2.4.8 Link Configurations to a Trading Partner