Entry

I am investigating possibilities to connect Microsoft BizTalk 2004 to an IBM AS/400 running JD Edwards. What is the best way to connect these two programs?

Oct 12th, 2006 18:03
Glenn Johnson, Balaji Ramachandran, http://eai.ittoolbox.com/documents/document.asp?i=3315

There are 2 aspects to this:
1. Connect to JD Edwards as an application. (In this case platform is 
immaterial)
2. Connecting to AS400 platform (immaterial to application on it).
If you want to connect to JD Edwards then I think you will have to 
either use an API provided by the application or use 3rd party adaptor 
for JD Edwards and not for AS400. And if your aim is to only connect 
to 
AS400 and then call application from AS400 command line then it is a 
different issue. In that case I suggest you look into Magic software's 
EAI suite called iBOLT which is very strong in AS400/iseries 
connectivity with a separate adaptor for iSeries.
2. Adapted from response by Jake on Thursday, September 16, 2020
You can try the adapters for iWay Software's BTS 2004. These adapters 
are based on the Actional SOAPswitch technology acquired last year, 
and 
are specifically designed for BizTalk Server. If you want to connect 
to 
JDE from other platforms instead of just BizTalk Server, you could go 
with a standard iWay adapter.. Microsoft doesn't like them because 
they 
are Java-based, but they have plug-ins for most major integration 
platforms, plus support for JCA, Web services, and other connectivity 
mechanisms.
3. Adapted from response by bjgros on Thursday, September 16, 2020
I recently completed a large, high tech manufacturing, trading partner 
management, solution for a client down in the bay area that utilized 
Biztalk 2004 and the iWay JDE adapter. Since it sounds like you want 
to 
integrate directly with JDE, the iWay adapter would be the way to go. 
Some things to keep in mind:
1) The iWay adapter is the only one I know of at the moment for JDE 
and 
Biztalk.
2) The JDE integration layer is extremely granular (i.e. C based 
function calls) and the iWay adapter simply wraps these function 
calls. 
What this means for you is that there is no nice high level 
abstraction 
(for instance, receipt PO call). Instead you will have to make several 
calls for each transaction that look more like C calls. This is more 
of 
a limitation of JDE, but iWay does not solve the problem.
3) There is a Com+ wrapper and generic integration schema that will 
allow you to go against JDE directly. This appears to be relatively 
easy, but will require custom code.
Additional Clarification:
First, we need to determine which J.D. Edwards application you need to 
integrate with. For J.D. Edwards Enterprise One, much of the above 
applies. With J.D. Edwards World, you can either program in RPG, 
connect to the database (not recommended), emulate the 5250 interface 
(avoid if possible), or upload data via the Z-file(s) neutral file 
format. Sounds pretty complicated, right? So you are much better off 
using the JDE Connect solution from Magic Software which is basically 
an iSeries or System i5 equivalent to Microsoft BizTalk Server -- 
fully .NET capable, XML empowered, Web Services ready, etc. See 
http://www.magicsoftware.com/home/jde for details on that approach. 
Will save you a few months of floundering at the low levels of 
integration on the System i/iSeries/AS400 platform.