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Many newcomers to AIA and canonical models get overwhelmed with what information needs to be populated on the header. In Integration Developers Guide (which can be downloaded from metalink number 824495.1 or use this URL https://webiv.oraclecorp.com/cgi-bin/webiv/do.pl/Get?WwwID=note:824495.1), under the heading, Populating the EBO Object Identification has details on populating identification structure.

Below section describes Identification structure usage.

1. BusinessComponentID - This is a unique key for the application agnostic representation of the object instance. This is generated by the API provided by the Oracle AIA infrastrucutire. Within XSLT you would call populate XREF API to generate this key value. Hence these values will be stored in XREF table.
2. ID/ContextID - This is the business friendly (i.e. the one that has business context identification) identifier present in the participating application for this particular object instance. For example, PO number and Sales Order number.
3. ApplicationObjectkey - This is the Primary key of the participating application which is internally generated unique key for this particular object instance. For example, PK-Order-ID or Worker_ID.
4. AlternateObjectKey - Different ways of Identifying the same object instance. Use this element to capture additional information about the key. For example, GrouID in General Ledger entry or CONSECUTIVE_BILLING_NUMBER in Invoice. Not all Identifications may have this field populated.

Further, to define the environment in which an identifier is valid, a set of attributes that describes the validity of the key is supported in addition to the actual key value.
1. schemeID - Attribute schemeID provides information about the object type identified by the ID, for example ItemGUID for the GUID of an item and PartyGUID for the GUID of a party. For the BusinessComponentID, the schemeID is set to the name of the object followed by ' GUID'. For the ID, the schemeID is set to the name of the element as known in the participating application.
2. schemeVersionID - This describes the version of the identification scheme.
3. schemeAgencyID- This is the ID of the agency that manages the identification scheme of the identifier. The GUIDs generated by Oracle AIA will have AIA 01 populated in this attribute. For identifiers generated by participating applications, the short code for that of the participating application will be stores in this attribute.

If there are multiple instances of a packaged application that has the same business capability in a customer eco system, how many ABCS connectors do we need to integrate them?

The answer is, regardless of the number of application instances for a packaged application, AIA recommends to build only one ABCS connector for that packaged application to perform a specific business task.

It is the responsibility of the routing rules defined in the EBS that will orchestrate the message to the appropriate instance of the application.

Here are some of the best practices that are adopted by Oracle PIP Developers. If you are new to PIP and want to know what to look for when mapping Enterprise Business Message (EBM) in your XSLT transformation, please follow below best practices.

Dos:
 Select EBO based on Business Concept and not based on number of fields that match.
 Use Specification group cautiously, avoid if possible.
 Customize EBO for missing fields/Business Concepts
 Use Predefined corecom: prefixed Elements or DataTypes for customization.
 Refer to XMAN reports for understanding XREF/DVM and functional mapping of existing connectors
 Map Flags to Indicator types.
 Map fields semantically.
 Signup for FP and 2 day EBO training.
 Use appropriate Operations (EBMs).

Don'ts:
 Do not map just based on Data types
 Do not map just based on field name.
 Avoid creating your own data types.
 Don't Customize if Custom stub is not present.

One of the challenges in SOA implementation is visibility of SOA artifact inventory. A limitation in visibility will limit service reuse. To promote visibility of SOA artifacts i.e. Foundation Pack (FP) and Process Integration Pack (PIP) artifacts, AIA provides BSR (OER in FP 3.0). BSR allows you to search for services and other artifacts from a top down perspective. However, in many instances a top-down approach may not solve the problem and you may want to adopt bottoms-up approach. To aid PIP developers and analysts alike, AIA provides another tool which is called as XMAN (XSLT Mapping Analyzer). XMAN is a tool that introspect the mapping structure in complex XSL transformation and presents a user friendly report in HTML and CSV format. You an down load this tool from Metalink

The report shows ABM (Application Business Message) X-path , DVM (Domain Value Map), XREF (Cross-Reference) and EBM (Enterprise Business Message) X-path. A sample report of XMAN -