Integration

Most of the cases in which ITP/OnLine Server is utilized will be in the context of an integrating application. Business applications often lack the functionality to produce documents in a proper fashion. ITP/OnLine is fit to fill this gap. Consider the situation in which a business application requires a document to be produced. Suppose the business application consists of a client and a server component, from now "BA Client" and "BA Server", respectively. The picture in chapter Overview may be extended as follows. Note that this is a logical architecture which may be mapped on a physical architecture in many different ways.

There are two interfaces between the business application and ITP/OnLine Server:

1. An http interface between ITP/OnLine on the web server and the BA Client on the workstation, supporting client side integration of model runs.
2. A server-to-server interface between ITP/Server and the BA Server, supporting server side integration of model runs.

Integration of an interactive model run involves a number of steps:

• Preparation of the model run. This involves a (number of) call(s) from the BA Server to ITP/Server. Refer to section Server side integration.
• The model run itself, consisting of a sequence of HTML Forms, offered by the http interface between ITP/OnLine and the BA Client. Refer to section Client side integration.
• Processing of the model run. This can be achieved by specific implementations of some exit points on ITP/Server. Refer to section Server side integration.

The fact that a single model run consists of multiple steps introduces the notion of a session, which is shared by these steps.

Note

Business application integration using prepared model runs has been introduced in ITP/OnLine Server 3.2.20. Although the current version of ITP/OnLine can be used in combination with earlier versions of ITP/Server, the integration method described in this chapter is not available in such configurations. Instead, one should use the Runmodel call for non-prepared model runs, which is described in chapter Calls.
This chapter also describes model list integration using prepared model lists. This functionality has been introduced in ITP/OnLine Server 3.2.25. When an ITP/Server version 3.2.24 or earlier is used, one should use the call Listmodels for non-prepared model lists, which is also described in chapter Calls.