APPARATUS, SYSTEM, AND METHOD FOR SETTING/RETRIEVING HEADER INFORMATION DYNAMICALLY INTO/FROM SERVICE DATA OBJECTS FOR PROTOCOL BASED TECHNOLOGY ADAPTERS

• US 20070271341A1
• Filed: 05/18/2006
• Published: 11/22/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 05/18/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Kumar, Rajan, Koppa, Deepa Rao
• Granted Patent: US 8,028,025 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/206
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/107 Computer-aided management of electronic mailing [e-mailing]

Abstract

An apparatus, system, and method are disclosed for processing a technology specific message. In one embodiment, a computer program product receives a message having a conventional header and a user-defined header that both conform to a predefined header format, each header comprising a header name and a value; identifies each header in the message based on the predefined header format; generates a header structure to store the header name and the value from each header; stores the header structure in a set of header structures of an extendable message business object; and passes the extendable message business object to an integration broker.

Claims

1. A computer program product for processing a technology specific message comprising a computer useable medium including a computer readable program, wherein the computer program product when executed on a computer causes the computer to:

receive a message having a conventional header and a user-defined header that both conform to a predefined header format, each header comprising a header name and a value;

identify each header in the message based on the predefined header format;

generate a header structure to store the header name and the value from each header;

store the header structure in a set of header structures of an extendable message business object; and

pass the extendable message business object to an integration broker.

2. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein the header name of the header structure comprises metadata defining an arbitrary header field in the extendable message business object.

3. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein the header structure is a header business object and the set of header structures of an extendable message business object is a set of business header objects of an extendable message business object.

4. The computer program product of claim 3, wherein each header business object comprises a header name attribute holding the header name and a header value attribute holding the value.

5. The computer program product of claim 1, configured to communicate the user-defined headers to a destination EIS that processes the user-defined headers.

6. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein the message is an email message.

7. The computer program product of claim 6, wherein a conventional header comprises non-user-defined headers defined in RFC822 and a user-defined header comprises a user-defined header defined in RFC822 and the pre-defined header format comprises a format for conventional and user-defined headers as defined in RFC822.

8. The computer program product of claim 7, wherein the user-defined header is defined by a developer of an EIS.

9. The computer program product of claim 7, wherein the user-defined header is defined by a software tool in response to a user request.

10. The computer program product of claim 7, wherein the user-defined header is defined by a web developer.

11. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein the message is an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) conversation message.

12. A computer program product for processing a technology specific message comprising a computer useable medium including a computer readable program, wherein the computer program product when executed on a computer causes the computer to:

receive an extendable message business object from an integration broker, wherein the extendable message business object comprises a set of header structures, each header structure comprising a header name and a value;

extract the set of header structures from the extendable message business object;

generate a message comprising a conventional header and a user-defined header that both conform to a predefined header format, each user-defined header comprising a header name and a value.

13. The computer program product of claim 12, wherein the header name of the header structure comprises metadata defining an arbitrary header field in the extendable message business object.

14. The computer program product of claim 12, wherein the header structure is a header business object and the set of header structures of an extendable message business object is a set of business header objects of an extendable message business object.

15. The computer program product of claim 14, wherein each header business object comprises a header name attribute holding the header name and a header value attribute holding the value.

16. The computer program product of claim 12, configured to communicate the user-defined headers to a destination EIS that processes the user-defined headers.

17. The computer program product of claim 12, wherein the message is an email message.

18. The computer program product of claim 17, wherein a conventional header comprises non-user-defined headers defined in RFC822 and a user-defined header comprises a user-defined header defined in RFC822 and the pre-defined header format comprises a format for conventional and user-defined headers as defined in RFC822

19. The computer program product of claim 18, wherein the user-defined header is defined by a developer of an EIS.

20. The computer program product of claim 18, wherein the user-defined header is defined by a software tool in response to a user request.

21. The computer program product of claim 18, wherein the user-defined header is defined by a developer of a component compatible with a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA).

22. The computer program product of claim 12, wherein the message is an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) conversation message.

23. The computer program product of claim 13, wherein the extendable message business object comprises information from a record in a source EIS

24. A system for processing an email message, the system comprising:

an integration broker comprising a mapping module configured to map between an extendable message business object for an email adapter and an EIS (Enterprise Information System) specific business object usable by an EIS specific adapter;

an EIS specific adapter in communication with the integration broker, the EIS specific adapter configured to map between an EIS record and an EIS specific business object; and

an integration email adapter in communication with the integration broker and configured to receive an email message from a mail transfer agent having a conventional header and a user-defined header that both conform to a predefined header format, each user-defined header comprising a header name and a value, the integration email adapter further configured to identify each header in the email message based on the predefined header format;

to generate a header structure to store the header name and the value from each header;

to store the header structure in a set of header structures of an extendable message business object; and

to pass the extendable message business object to the integration broker.

25. A method of providing a service to process an email message, the method comprising:

receiving a message having a conventional header and a user-defined header that both conform to a predefined header format, each user-defined header comprising a header name and a value;

identifying each header in the message based on the predefined header format;

generating a header structure to store the header name and the value from each header;

storing the header structure in a set of header structures of an extendable message business object; and

passing the extendable message business object to an integration broker.

26. A computer program product for dynamically setting header information in service data objects comprising a computer useable medium including a computer readable program, wherein the computer program product when executed on a computer causes the computer to:

parse an email message having RFC822 compliant header fields and a message body wherein at least one RFC822 header field is a conventional header specified in RFC822 and as least one RFC822 header field is a user-defined header field according to RFC822;

for each RFC822 header field, create a storage object comprising a field-name from the RFC822 header field and a field-body from the RFC822 header field;

construct an email wrapper business object comprising the body of the email message;

for each storage object, create a header business object having a header name equivalent to the field-name and a header value equivalent to the field-body and associate each header business object with the email wrapper business object;

map the email wrapper business object to an application specific business object; and

send the application specific business object to an application,

wherein mapping the email wrapper business object transforms the email wrapper business object, including the user-defined field, for use by the application, and

wherein the user-defined header field is an arbitrary header field.

27. The computer program product of claim 26, wherein the user-defined header is defined by a developer of an EIS.

28. The computer program product of claim 26, wherein the user-defined header is defined by a software tool in response to a user request.

29. A method for deploying computing infrastructure comprising:

receiving customer requirements for transfer of a user-defined header from a mail transfer agent to a destination EIS;

deploying an integration email adapter into the customer computing infrastructure, the integration email adapter configured to receive an email message from the mail transfer agent having a conventional header and a user-defined header that both conform to a predefined header format, each user-defined header comprising a header name and a value, the integration email adapter further configured

to identify each header in the email message based on the predefined header format;

to generate a header structure to store the header name and the value from each header;

to store the header structure in a set of header structures of an extendable message business object; and

to pass the extendable message business object to an integration broker; and

configuring the destination EIS to extract the user-defined header from the extendable message business object for use by the destination EIS.

30. The method of claim 29, wherein the header structure is a header business object and the set of header structures of an extendable message business object is a set of business header objects of an extendable message business object.

31. The method of claim 30, wherein each header business object comprises a header name attribute holding the header name and a header value attribute holding the value.

32. The method of claim 29, wherein a conventional header comprises non-user-defined headers defined in RFC822 and a user-defined header comprises a user-defined header defined in RFC822 and the pre-defined header format comprises a format for conventional and user-defined headers as defined in RFC822.

33. The method of claim 32, wherein the user-defined header is defined by a developer of an EIS.

34. The method of claim 32, wherein the user-defined header is defined by a software tool in response to a user request.

35. The method of claim 33, wherein the user-defined header is defined by an application integration developer.