Learn basics of B2B for Oracle Integration 2 (OIC)

What is B2B?

B2B e-commerce represents classic business processes, mature business documents, and industry-tempered messaging services. It requires a unified business process platform, end-to-end instance tracking, visibility and auditing, integrated process intelligence, process and service governance, and centralized security.

What is EDI?

Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) covers a set of data formats used to exchange formal business documents between companies.

B2B for Oracle Integration:

Oracle Integration provides support for B2B e-commerce with B2B for Oracle Integration. In B2B e-commerce, an enterprise extends its business processes to reach trading partners.

B2B for Oracle Integration represents a collective set of features inside Oracle Integration to support processing, including:

· A trading partner management interface.

· An EDI schema editor for customization.

· A specialized B2B tracking user interface for viewing messages exchanged with trading partners.

· Adapters to support B2B protocols such as AS2 and FTP.

· Actions you place within your integrations for EDI processing.

Business Protocols Supported in B2B for Oracle Integration:
B2B for Oracle Integration supports the EDI X12 and EDIFACT business protocols for the exchange of business documents between Oracle Integration and a trading partner. EDI X12 versions 4010 to 8010 and EDIFACT versions D96A (1996) through D20A (2020), which include all document types within each version, are provided with B2B for Oracle Integration.

Transport Protocols Supported in B2B for Oracle Integration:

The transport protocol defines the underlying transport used to send and receive data between trading partners. B2B for Oracle Integration supports the following protocols:

· AS2 (Applicability Statement 2)

· FTP and SFTP

The following protocols are available for use in B2B for Oracle Integration, but do not support trading partner mode.

· AQ

· File

· REST

· SOAP

· JMS

Two Patterns For Using B2B for Oracle Integration:

B2B for Oracle Integration can be used in two different ways. This section describes these two patterns for processing B2B messages.

· Standalone mode:

Uses the basic building blocks such as the AS2, FTP, SOAP, or REST Adapters along with the B2B action to process B2B messages. This is the same as any other integration. You build the B2B integrations yourself and track the processing of B2B messages as integration instances on the Track Instances page. In this mode, the B2B trading partner definitions are not used.

· B2B trading partner mode:

Extends standalone mode and provides a fully declarative and configuration-driven setup with trading partner management and a specialized B2B message tracking user interface (the Track B2B Messages page). You define trading partner profiles at design-time and use them during runtime. You only create integrations to interface with your backend applications. Behind the scenes, however, message processing still occurs through integrations. The integrations are automatically created for you using templates available with B2B for Oracle Integration. In short, this mode provides you with a ready-to-use solution that you simply configure and use.

The differences between these two modes are as follows. Overall, the B2B trading partner mode is the preferred pattern to use because it is fully-declarative and simpler to use. This mode was introduced recently when compared to the standalone mode.

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