Connectivity Options
InterSystems IRIS® enables you to define inbound and outbound connections to a wide variety of technologies. There are three general categories of options: adapters, specialized business host classes, and gateways.
If the built-in tools do not meet your needs, you can create your own components. For a compact list of available APIs, see the InterSystems Tools Reference.
Adapter Library
InterSystems IRIS provides many adapters, and you can define your own. InterSystems IRIS provides adapters for the following scenarios:
Managed File Transfer (MFT)
The Managed File Transfer adapter allows you to send and receive files from Box, DropBox, and Kiteworks managed file services.
MQSeries
Receives and sends messages in IBM WebSphere MQ (MQ Series) format. Message content can be a specific data type or a binary data stream. The adapter can simply send the message, or send it and then pull the corresponding response from the message queue.
See Using IBM WebSphere MQ Adapters in Productions.
SOAP
Listens for SOAP requests on a local TCP port or via a standard web server. Dispatches outbound requests by acting as a SOAP client to an external SOAP server. In this special case, adapters are not necessarily involved.
See Creating Web Services and Web Clients in Productions.
To use an adapter, you define a business host class that uses the adapter class. For a general description of this process, see Developing Productions. The books in the previous list provide details that apply to the specific adapters.
As noted previously, you can also define your own adapters. For information, see Developing Productions.
Business Host Classes That Use Adapters
For specific scenarios, InterSystems IRIS® provides specialized business service classes and business operation classes that already use specific adapters:
To use these business hosts, it is not generally necessary to perform any coding.
For practical reasons, the following sections might not cover all the specialized business host classes that InterSystems IRIS provides. To find all the specialized business host classes that specify an adapter, perform a search in Studio, and look for Parameter ADAPTER within the EnsLib package. Studio then displays the names of the classes, which generally indicate which adapter they use.
Business Host Classes That Use File Adapters
InterSystems IRIS provides business host classes that use the file adapters. The following table summarizes the supported content types and indicates where to find information.
Business Host Classes That Use FTP Adapters
InterSystems IRIS provides business host classes that use the FTP adapters. The following table summarizes the supported content types and indicates where to find information.
Business Host Classes That Use HTTP and SOAP Adapters
InterSystems IRIS provides business host classes that use the HTTP adapters. The following table summarizes the supported content types and indicates where to find information.
Business Host Classes That Use TCP Adapters
InterSystems IRIS provides business host classes that use TCP adapters. The following table summarizes the supported content types and indicates where to find information.
Gateways and External Servers
InterSystems IRIS provides the following gateways and external servers:
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The SQL Gateway, which provides access from InterSystems IRIS to external databases via JDBC and ODBC. You can, for example, link to tables and views in external sources and access the data in them in the same way you access any local data. See Using the InterSystems SQL Gateway.
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An InterSystems External Server allows you to instantiate and manipulate objects written in an external language as if they were native objects within InterSystems IRIS. See Using InterSystems External Servers. In most cases, using the PEX framework to interact with an external language from a production is preferred over using the $system.external interface provided by the external server.
