iWay Service Manager Suite of FTP Tools
iWay Service Manager (iSM) offers a full complement
of FTP services that are designed specifically to be used in transactional
situations. These services include client and server-side, RFC-compliant
capabilities for FTP, FTPS, and SFTP.
This section describes features in the iSM FTP suite of tools
for the client side and the server side of the FTP/SFTP suite.
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The FTP client suite allows iSM to connect to and interact
with an FTP, FTPS, or SFTP server. The client is capable of detecting
the existence of a file on the remote server and reacting to this
existence (through an iSM FTP, FTPS, or SFTP listener).
The reaction of the client based on the existence of a file could
be as simple as retrieving the file. It can also involve a complex
iSM process flow that includes a series of steps that can manipulate
that file or a group of files on the remote system or other systems that
iSM is capable of accessing.
The following components are currently available in the FTP client
suite of tools:
- Two listeners used to detect and react to the existence
of a file on the server:
- FTP/FTPS Client Listener
- SFTP Client Listener
- Two services (agents) to read a file from the server:
- FTP/FTPS Read Service (com.ibi.agents.XDNFTPReadAgent)
- SFTP Read Service (com.ibi.agents.XDSFTPReadAgent)
- Two services (agents) to write (emit) a file to the server:
- FTP/FTPS Emit Service (com.ibi.agents.XDNFTPEmitAgent)
- SFTP Emit Service (com.ibi.agents.XDSFTPEmitAgent)
- Two services (agents) that perform various file-based operations
(exists, delete, size, and so on) on a file(s) located on the server:
- FTP/FTPS File Ops Service (com.ibi.agents.XDNFTPFileOpsAgent)
- SFTP File Ops Service (com.ibi.agents.XDSFTPFileOpsAgent)
- Two services (agents) that list the contents of server directories:
- FTP/FTPS Directory Listing Service (com.ibi.agents. XDNFTPDirListAgent)
- SFTP Directory Listing Service (com.ibi.agents. XDSFTPDirListAgent)
- Two services (agents) to enable a process flow to share connections
between the client services and the FTP server:
- FTP/FTPS
Connection Control Service (com.ibi.agents. XDNFTPConnectionCacheAgent)
- SFTP Connection Control Service (com.ibi.agents. XDSFTPConnectionCacheAgent)
- Service (agent) to present context Special Registers (SREGs)
to a remote iSM server (com.ibi.agents.XDNFTPSREGAgent).
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The FTP client suite of tools can be used to handle
a variety of application requirements, such as:
- The FTP/SFTP listener can be configured to monitor a directory
on the server.
- When a specific file name (and/or extension)
is written to that directory, that file will be retrieved and saved
to a directory on the client.
- Alternately, the file that is retrieved can be presented to
an iSM process flow and used as the input for additional processing
by iSM (for example, updating a database table and initiating an
SAP transaction).
- When used in conjunction with other iSM listeners, the FTP/SFTP
clients can be used within an iSM process flow to transfer data
from the client system to the server.
- A messaging listener
such as MSMQ or JMS can be used to take a message from a queue.
The message itself or specific message contents can be transferred
to the server.
- An SAP IDoc that is obtained using the iWay Application Adapter
for mySAP ERP (SAP JCo 3.x) could be sent to the server.
- Sending an EDI file to a VAN.
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The FTP server suite of tools provides two listeners:
- FTP/FTPS Server Listener
- SFTP Server Listener
Both listeners have the same characteristics in common. The listeners
can be configured to interact with the client in the same way that
any FTP/SFTP server would. For example, handling the request of
the client (send, receive, rename, delete, and so on) as the server.
The advantage of the FTP server suite of tools is the ability to
configure the listeners to use the file(s) that are received as
messages that can be used to initiate a complex iSM process flow.
Corresponding results are then returned from those process flows.
Security
The FTP server suite of tools can be configured to handle login
security using standard server authentication realms (LDAP, RDBMS,
text based property file, Kerberos, and so on) as well as a complete
directory authorization capability and user role tracking.
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The FTP server suite of tools can be used to handle
a variety of application requirements, such as:
- Receiving transaction messages (including EDI) from partners
who need to use a standard protocol, and then passing these messages
to a process flow. This a good solution for participating in standard
EDI networks by EDI splitters and transformers.
- Receiving files and using a process flow to redistribute the
incoming files to one or more internal recipients.
- Act as a relay for large files where not having the actual file
materialized on a local disk is required. This can include the receipt
of a file outside of a firewall and then relaying the file through
the firewall.
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Common Listener Functionality
All listeners offer the standard server startup failure
flows to handle processing issues when the listener begins and when
specific error conditions occur during the operation of the listener.