Differences between the transformation technologies in WMB and WTX

What are the overlaps and main differences between the transformation technologies in WMB and WTX?

There are some overlaps between transformation capabilities, but at their core, the two products have complementary strengths — WMB's being routing, WTX's being complex transformation

Message Broker is a platform for "enterprise-class data movement and message processing" building off the well proven capabilities of WebSphere MQ. WebSphere MQ is the industry-leading platform for assured transactional message delivery. On its own, it provides no capability to "manipulate" the content of messages, but in combination with WebSphere Message Broker, it offers very powerful capabilities. WMB is rich in detecting and distributing information based on message content, switching between protocols, refacing applications to perform and appear as Web services, providing high volume, high availability processing and more. It also has many different options for data transformation catering to different skill sets. While these data transformation capabilities are typically a class above those offered by other integration vendor's, WMB's focus has been mostly on the domain of small short messages.

WTX comes from a different background and has different strengths. Its heritage is the processing of large file structures, and in this area, it is particularly rich. It can provide complex data transformation capabilities for all and any structured and semi-structured data formats (including "mixed" types). Furthermore, WTX is better suited to handling "custom" tagged message formats or mixed tagged and binary. Finally, it is well suited for large file strucutures.

Combined, WTX and WMB provide a truly winning combination that is unique in the market in its breadth and depth.

Why not include WTXMB as integral component of WMB?

IBM prefers to give customers choice by providing a range of packaging options allowing the start simple and grow as and when required.

MB COMPONENTS :

• Message Flow : A message flow is a sequence of processing steps that run in the broker when an input message is received.

• Message Set   :  A message set is a container for grouping messages and associated message resources (elements, types, groups);COMPLEX TYPE CREATION .

• Execution Group : A grouping of message flows that have been assigned to a broker.

• Broker : A broker is a set of execution processes or groups that hosts one or more message flows to route, transform, and enrich in flight messages.

• Broker Domain : A broker domain is one or more brokers that share a common configuration, together with the single Configuration Manager that controls them.

• Configuration Manager : The Configuration Manager is the interface between the workbench and an executing set of brokers. It provides brokers with their initial configuration, and updates them with any subsequent changes. It maintains the broker domain configuration. It is the central runtime component that manages the components and resources that constitute the broker domain.

-  The Configuration Manager has four main functions:

• Maintains configuration details in an internal repository. This repository provides a central record of the broker domain components.
• Deploys the broker topology and message processing operations in response to actions initiated through the workbench. Broker archive (BAR) files are deployed through the Configuration Manager to the execution groups within a broker.
• Reports on the results of deployment and the status of the broker.
• Communicates with other components in the broker domain using WebSphere® MQ transport services.

DataBase Interaction Uses ESQL statements in DataBase Node

-Use the Database node to interact with a database in the specified ODBC data source.

You can use specialized forms of this node to:

• Update values within a database table (the DataUpdate node)
• Insert rows into a database table (the DataInsert node)
• Delete rows from a database table (the DataDelete node)
• Store the message, or parts of the message, in a warehouse (the Warehouse node)

DataBase Interaction With DataBaseRetrieve Node :

- Use the DatabaseRetrieve node to ensure that information in a message is up to date.

- Use the DatabaseRetrieve node to modify a message using information from a database. For example, you can add information to a message using a key that is contained in a message; the key can be an account number(Select Query Elements & DataElements).

- The DatabaseRetrieve node looks up values from a database and stores them as elements in the outgoing message assembly trees. The type of information that is obtained from the database in the form of output column values, which is acquired and passed back in the result set from SQL queries, is converted first into a matching Java type, then into an internal message element value type when it is finally stored in a location in am outgoing message assembly tree. If a message element already exists in the outgoing message tree, the new value overwrites the old value. If the target element does not exist, it is created, and the value is stored.

- Uses specified Configurable Service Name as a Data Source Name.

- Run mqsisetdbparms command if the Configurable service is newly created.

DataBase Interaction With DataBaseRoute Node :

- Use the DatabaseRoute node to route messages using information from a database in conjunction with XPath expressions.

- The DatabaseRoute node uses a collection of named column values from a selected database row and synchronously applies one or more XPath expressions to these acquired values to make routing decisions.

- Uses specified Configurable Service Name as a Data Source Name.

- Run mqsisetdbparms command if the Configurable service is newly created.