I am new to webMethods and am trying to learn it without any samples, templates, etc. I am trying to create a flow service that will be invoked by a TN processing rule. The service is (should be) basic: take in an XML document representing an order; extract the order data…I guess by mapping to my company’s standard doctype for order…;then loading the extracted data to an external SQL database. In TN I have a doctype set up that represents and accepts the customer’s XML document (it correctly identifies the document type, customer, receiver, and kicks off the appropriate processing rule). In Developer, I have doctypes for both the customer XML format and my company’s standard XML format for order (SOX 3.5). Why, I have both I’m not sure! The first (and only step) in my flow service is to invoke the xmlNodeToDocument. I am unclear as to what the output should be: our standard doctype? the customer’s doctype? something else? I’m assuming that the second step would be to map incoming fields to ??? to extract the data. But once extracted…where is it? what do I do with it?
Help! And, thanks!

Jocelyn,

Sounds like your company has assigned you a task but not yet provided any opportunity for training on the tools you are to use. You appear to have the basics for Trading Networks down, but need help building one or more Flow services to transform a customer order from one format to another so that you can send that order to your company’s order management application.

Apparently, webMethods no longer provides the Developer Tutorial for IS 4.6 on its Advantage website. That’s a shame since it was useful even though somewhat dated.

I would suggest asking your employer to purchase online training for the [COLOR=#000000]webMethods 7 Integration Fundamentals course available through the Learning Passport. You can request more information on this course by emailing elearning webMethods com.[/color]

Yes, you’ll use one or more MAP statements to transform data. Transformations may simply change field / element names, may replace values in the source document with values for the target, may change the structure of the document to something completely different or all three. All of these types of transformations are the bread and butter of Flow.

Once you have the data in the desired format you need to do something useful with it. That may simply be inserting into a relational database table using a call to an JDBC adapter service or may involve invoking other Flow services which interact directly with the backend order management application. Others in your organization can probably suggest which of these makes sense.

Remember to leverage the extensive documentation found in the Developer User’s Guide and the Built-In Services Guide. Those PDF’s are accessible through the help menu or in your webm_home/Developer/doc folder.

Hope that gets you started,

[FONT=Arial][SIZE=2]Mark
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Even without looking at samples, you should review the TN documentation to understand how to structure your service.

Having two doc types is quite common. One represents the format of the PO sent by the partner. The other represents, as you stated, the format your company uses. So your service is likely supposed to map from the partner PO to your company PO and then send that company PO to somewhere–presumably to your order management application, whatever that may be. How you accomplish that depends on the application and the typical approach your company wants to use to communicate from IS to that app.

I assume there is someone else (a tech lead perhaps) that can provide additional guidance to you.

I’d also recommend that you go through the samples and/or tutorials. You’ll be much more effective if you do so.

Thanks for the responses. Training is an issue. I have been reading and rereading webMethods documentation: while it is comprehensive and plentiful, there isn’t much that ties all of the pieces together or shows how to tie them all together effectively.
It was suggested that I review and work with the samples and tutorials. I would love to…if I can find out where they are? The only samples I’ve been able to find are sample PO xml documents, etc. It would be great if I could find samples of a flow service, etc. I have found nothing that looks like a “tutorial”.
Can someone point me in that direction? Thanks again!

[URL=“wmusers.com”]wmusers.com

There are a number of samples on Advantage, including the WmSamples package which used to be available via the installer. Log in to Advantage and navigate to Knowledge Base | Samples.