AI Suite

Version 2.4
28 November 2023

Concepts Guide
Copyright © 2023 Axway

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This documentation describes the following Axway software:

Axway AI Suite 2.4

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Contents

Preface 5
Who should read this guide 5
How to use this guide 5
Related documents 5
Training services 6
Support services 6

Accessibility 7
Screen reader support 7
Support for high contrast and accessible use of colors 7

1 Concepts 8
Use cases 8
Accounting integration 8
Reconciliation 10
Features and services 11
Accounting transformation 12
Data entry 12
Auto-documentation 14
Data storage 14
Security 17
Visibility 17
Processing 18
Communication 18
Products 20
AccountingIntegrator 20
InterPlay 20
Datastore 21
AI Suite Studio 21
PassPort 22
Sentinel 22
Composer 22

2 How the products work together 24

Data flows 24
Batch processing 25
Event-driven control 26
Access management 29
Visibility 30

Axway AI Suite 2.4 Concepts Guide 3

 Configuration design 31
With Composer 31
With Designer 32

Axway AI Suite 2.4 Concepts Guide 4

Preface

This guide describes the AI Suite solution. It presents the various use cases this solution is designed to
address. It also explains how the products work together.

Who should read this guide

This guide is intended for enterprise architects, enterprise personnel involved in the implementation
project, and Axway Professional Services personnel.

Familiarity with Axway products is recommended.

How to use this guide

The following is a brief description of the contents of each chapter:
Concepts – Describes the suite and relevant use cases. It also contains information on the features,
services, and products provided by the suite. For more information, see Concepts on page 8.

How the products work together – Describes how the products work together in the context of
data flows, access management, and visibility. It also contains basic architectural examples of the
suite. For more information, see How the products work together on page 24.

Glossary – Contains a list of terms used in this guide and their definitions.

Related documents
The following documents also provide useful information relating to AI Suite:
l Axway Supported Platforms:
Lists the different operating systems, databases, browsers, and thick client platforms supported
by each Axway product.
l PassPort Administrators Guide :
This documentation describes how to configure and manage PassPort.

Note All Axway documentation is available on Axway Support at https://support.axway.com.

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 Preface

Training services
Axway offers training across the globe, including on-site instructor-led classes and self-paced online
learning. For details, go to: http://www.axway.com/support-services/training

Support services
The Axway Global Support team provides worldwide 24 x 7 support for customers with active support
agreements.

Email [email protected] or visit Axway Support at https://support.axway.com.

Axway AI Suite 2.4 Concepts Guide 6

Accessibility

Axway strives to create accessible products and documentation for users.

This documentation provides the following accessibility features:

l Screen reader support
l Support for high contrast and accessible use of colors

Screen reader support

l Alternative text is provided for images whenever necessary.
l The PDF documents are tagged to provide a logical reading order.

Support for high contrast and accessible use of

colors
l The documentation can be used in high-contrast mode.
l There is sufficient contrast between the text and the background color.
l The graphics have the right level of contrast and take into account the way color-blind people
perceive colors.

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Concepts
1
AI Suite provides a set of services for automating the accounting translation and integration processes
between source business applications and target financial and accounting systems. These services
include:

l Transformation of business transactions into journal entries. See Accounting transformation on

page 12.
l Exception handling. See Exception handling on page 13.
l Manual data entries. See Manual data entry on page 13.
l Auto-documentation. See Auto-documentation on page 14.
l Audit trail. See Audit trail on page 15.
l Reconciliation. See Reconciliation on page 16.
l Identity and access management. See Access management on page 29.
l Visibility and monitoring. See Visibility on page 30.

AI Suite can be combined with other Axway products to create a comprehensive integration system
that provides the following additional services for both accounting and non-accounting data flows:

l File transfer
l Message processing
l Orchestration

Use cases
This section describes the following use cases:
l Accounting integration on page 8
l Reconciliation on page 10

Accounting integration
Business applications generate events that represent the company's activities: ordering goods and
services, receiving or sending payments, producing and delivering goods and services.

In a typical scenario, an event is transformed into detailed accounting entries through the application
of accounting schemes that define the account allocation rules. The generated entries are aggregated
and posted to the general ledger and can also be sent to a subledger, a reporting application, or other
financial systems.

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1 Concepts

Typical approaches to accounting integration often result in a "spaghetti" architecture in which each
business application is connected to multiple back-office applications. This approach can result in a
number of problems:
l Inconsistency because of the number of sources
l Security issues when entering events
l Visibility and audit issues
l Difficulties in the implementation of regulatory changes
l Issues related to event recovery in error

AI Suite addresses these issues by providing a single point of interaction between business
applications and financial and accounting systems.

At the heart of AI Suite, a transformation component receives the events and transforms them into
journal entries that are then posted to the general ledger and other systems. The transformation
component is configured according to transformation rules that are interpreted by a rule engine. It
generates audit trails, handles exceptions and can treat millions of events.

AI Suite provides a real answer to the problems generated by a "spaghetti" type of architecture,
ensuring coherence, integrity and security. AI Suite:
l Provides flexibility to adapt quickly to required changes by tracking any changes using the audit
trail.
l Ensures data integrity, transparency, and traceability of the accounting process. It enables the
financial organization to enforce, control, and comply with accounting rules and principles in a
cost-effective way.
l Accelerates financial closings by promptly resolving any errors in a secured, managed, and
audited environment.
l Provides an easy way to make end-of-month adjustments to provisions and accruals, or amend
transactions within the accounting integration process.

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Reconciliation
A reconciliation solution automates and standardizes the processing of transactions for the month-
end close by aligning two related functions:
l Daily event reporting – accounting activities
l Periodical inventory reporting – periodical account control to publish the fiscal and financial
report

Daily event reporting takes daily input events from the operational systems, normalizes and enriches
them with data coming from external repositories, and processes them to generate entries to the
general ledger.

Periodical inventory reporting extracts information for each contract that is managed in the
operational systems, locates the associated account number, and reconciles what comes from the
inventory and what comes from accounting. When the reconciliation is correct, the contract inventory
and the accounting entries are stored in the financial data warehouse where they will be used to
create the financial report.

This closing process, often at the end of the month, is managed and monitored closely. Because it is a
critical process, many companies try to reduce the delay to produce the financial report.

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The following diagram illustrates the reconciliation process.

Features and services

This section describes the features and services provided by AI Suite.
l Accounting transformation on page 12
l Data entry on page 12
l Auto-documentation on page 14
l Data storage on page 14
l Security on page 17
l Visibility on page 17
l Processing on page 18
l Communication on page 18

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Accounting transformation
AI Suite provides transformation services that enable companies to quickly integrate business
application information with general ledgers, compliance-enabled reporting, and financial monitoring
systems through a single point of control.

These services include:

l Data quality controls through identification of the data flow and the source application, validation
of the data flow structure, numerical and date fields, and duplicate flows
l Data enrichment using internal and external repositories, for example, market values and
currency rates
l Accounting transformation to create the general ledger postings for different GAAPs:
o Application of accounting schemes to create debit and credit entries
o Assignment of general ledger accounts
o Calculation of the accounting effective date based on the general ledger period calendar
and backdate considerations
l Reversal process to reverse journal entries previously posted in the general ledger
l Technical transformation including data conversion, technical mappings, and feeds for financial
systems other than the general ledgers
l Aggregation or consolidation of general ledger postings or of business events based on selected
criteria, partial or global aggregation
l Balancing check to control that the total of debit entries is equal to the total of credit entries
based on a list of criteria
l Generation of multiple outputs from single source business data
l Generation of reports

Data entry
AI Suite provides a data entry service that enables the manual entry of new business events or
accounting adjustments. It also provides the ability to correct events that have been rejected during
the accounting integration process.

The data entry features include:

l Unit input and mass input
l Unit correction and mass update
l Access to rejected events from the error list
l Configurable controls on entered data
l Access to internal or external repositories
l Multi criteria search
l Error statistics

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l Life cycle management for flows of data or events

l Export to Excel files
l Reports
l Audit of corrected data

Manual data entry

The following diagram shows the global process for manual data entries.

1. Users enter new business events or new accounting entries.

2. Entered or modified properties are controlled.
3. Entered data is validated.

4. New events are exported to be integrated in the target application.

Exception handling
AI Suite provides exception handling services that allows rejected data to be manually corrected and
reprocessed.

The exception handling services can:

l Process errors that are not linked to operational systems, such as those due to repository
desynchronization.
l Speed up error management when returning to operational systems is complex or when multiple
control steps are required.
l Ensure the integrity of data flow processing.

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The following diagram shows the global process for exception handling.

1. Rejected events are imported into AI Suite.

2. Users view and correct errors and the entries are validated.
3. New events are exported to the target application.

Auto-documentation
AI Suite provides an auto-documentation service that enables companies to manage the life cycle of
accounting methods.

The auto-documentation service includes the following use cases:

l Accounting methods repository

l Validation of accounting methods by business users
l Proof of performed accounting methods
l Impact assessment / Advanced searches

The auto-documentation service includes the following features:

l Documentation structuring with domains and products

l Design of business events
l Association of accounting methods and events
l Import of data tables and charts accounts
l Production data sampling to provide significant illustration to the accounting methods

Data storage
AI Suite provides storage for data from business applications and the general ledger making it
possible to perform various control and reconciliation processes using standard functions or using the
solution API.

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Audit trail
AI Suite provides an audit trail between business events or transactions coming from business
applications and detailed accounting entries sent to the general ledger.

Audit traces are generated during the accounting integration process. Generation of audit traces can
be configured for different steps, such as enrichment, translation, aggregation, and transformation.
These audit traces can apply to business events, detailed accounting entries, and aggregated
accounting entries.

At the end of the accounting integration process, audit traces are imported in the AI Suite data store.

The GUI allows authorized users to build queries to view the audit trail, to set up filters, and to do
various operations such as sums, counts, and aggregations.

Query results can be stored in the data warehouse, exported to Excel files, or published in various
formats using the BIRT reporting tool included. Query results can also be shared among multiple
users.

Access rights management allows administrators to design roles and privileges with a very fine
granularity.

The following diagram illustrates the audit trail process.

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Reconciliation
The diagram below illustrates a reconciliation process between business applications and the general
ledger.

1. Inventories can be imported in the data store or can be first processed for enrichment,
transformation or aggregation to provide consistency in terms of criteria and granularity with
account balances.
2. Account balances coming from the general ledger are imported in the data store and the
reconciliation process is executed.
3. The reconciliation process detects discrepancies and store them in the data store. They can also
be published using the reporting tool.
4. With the user interface, business users are able to view discrepancies and start an analyze using
the audit trail.

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Security
AI Suite provides full access rights management allowing a complete separation between entities or
between users according to their responsibilities.
AI Suite provides the following access management features:
l Manage a PKI store with certificate/key generation, import, export, certificate signing requests
(CSRs), certificate revocation list (CRL) validation, and versioning
l Delegate authentication to LDAP, Active Directory, or custom authentication sources
l Streamline login processes with a single sign-on (SSO) agent, supporting SiteMinder or custom
connectors
l Control rights via role-based access control (RBAC), including customizable privileges and roles
l Standardize user provisioning with group-based access control and password policy management
l Modify settings and information dynamically via the API, and customize access rights and policies

Visibility
The goal of visibility is to capture events and to assign business relevance to them.
AI Suite provides the following visibility features:
l End-to-end, near real-time visibility: Monitor transactions and events throughout your
community in real time
o Identify trends and opportunities more quickly with real-time visibility of transactions and
events
o Reduce problem resolution time and costs by up to 80 percent with event monitoring,
non-event detection, and proactive notification of process disruptions
o Improve flow management with a centralized, global view of your IT operations and
business processes
l Enterprise intelligence: Gain the data needed to define and initiate immediate action —
automatically
o Aggregate business metrics with a correlation rules engine that defines business and
technical key performance indicators (KPIs)
o Process monitored data to define and initiate actions automatically
l Flexibility, interoperability, usability: Open, service-oriented architecture provides true
interoperability within your infrastructure and with your trading partners
o Monitor any application script or application in your environment
o View real-time visual representations of system and business process health through
customized KPI dashboards
o Extend capabilities to business managers and partners with minimal training, using a
user-friendly interface

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Processing
In addition to the accounting integration services, AI Suite can provide the following processing
services:

l Custom integration on page 18

l Process management on page 18

Custom integration
Management of simple and complex integration processes that include:
l Transformation of content
l Protocol mediation
l The ability to support files of any size, messages and APIs

Real-time, scalable core processing services for quick data integration can be designed and
implemented as complex processes regardless of the data source.

Messaging processing may be applied at any step of the integration process. This includes:
l Controlling syntax and semantics
l Enrichment, including database and web services call
l Applying any-to-any transformation
l Splitting the received data into multiple sub-messages
l Creating the acknowledgments for successful or failed operations
l Enveloping or grouping messages retrieved from multiple sources
l Routing messages to the appropriate destination

Process management
An orchestration process defines the proper execution of automatic as well as human activities and
initiates these activities through time. It can be used to orchestrate complex processes combining the
AI Suite services: accounting integration, data entry, audit trail, custom integration, and so on.

Communication
In AI Suite, you define the different messages, protocols, or processing connections that support the
exchanges between the input applications, the AI Suite system and the accounting and financial
applications.

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Support for business message formats

AI Suite supports various document formats including:
l Flat file (in-house)
l COBOL
l XML
l IDOC
AI Suite supports various trading exchange protocols using SecureTransport. These protocols include:
l HTTP/S
l FTP, SFTP, FTPS
l Web services
l PeSIT

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Products
AI Suite is based on a flexible product architecture. Your choice of products depends on the services
needed to satisfy your business requirements. Your product portfolio can change as your business
needs evolve.

For descriptions of how the AI Suite products interoperate, see How the products work together on
page 24.

The main products in AI Suite are:

l AccountingIntegrator on page 20
l InterPlay on page 20
l Datastore on page 21
l AI Suite Studio on page 21
These products are connected to a range of products that provide global visibility, authentication,
user right management, as well as configuration tools:
l PassPort on page 22
l Sentinel on page 22
l Composer on page 22

AccountingIntegrator
AccountingIntegrator is an integration and file transformation product for accounting events. It
interprets and transforms Input Events according to the conversion rules you set up.

AccountingIntegrator enables you to:

l Ensure the integrity of the accounting and financial systems according to the business systems.
l Implement the accounting specifications and regulations.
l Ensure the integrity of the data flow processing.
l Ensure the synchronization with the accounting and financial systems.
l Provide secured data to the accounting and financial systems.

InterPlay
InterPlay enables structured data creation, correction, and enrichment using a web user interface.
InterPlay provides the flexibility needed to roll out an integrated solution that can:
l Recycle incorrect flows regardless of their source (ERPs, specific applications, and so on)
l Create entry forms for any type of Miscellaneous Transaction (MT) or business event
l Secure, authenticate, and manage error correction and data entry operations
l Run and monitor data entry and recycling process

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Datastore
Datastore is a highly scalable, high volume data repository that stores:
l Input events processed by AccountingIntegrator
l Generated output postings
l Audit traces of the transformation that has occurred based on the rule assumptions.

Datastore can be used as a financial audit trail repository. It allows integrity management and safe
preservation of data over time. Datastore is extensible and allows storage of additional data, such as
accounting repositories and business inventories.

Datastore provides the following features:

l Datastore Runtime
o Partition management
o Space management
o High performance injection tool
o Complete API
o Cache management
o Archive/purge management
l Datastore Client
o Query wizard to define requests to the Datastore
o Storage and management of the query results (aggregation, sorting, filtering)
o User rights to limit the access to the queries
o Integration of custom queries defined using the API
o Audit trail navigation queries
o Management of the user preferences
o Internationalization of the user interface

AI Suite Studio
AI Suite Studio provides an accountant-friendly vision of the working of AI Suite, that helps in each
phase of the process.

l Identify - In the everyday operation of the system (batch processing), accountants can
understand what is going on, and identify which accounting rules are being fired to produce a
given output. If anything seems unusual, this will either give them a reassuring explanation about
why things are happening this way, or will provide them with information they can present to IT
personnel to justify their concern about the configuration.
l Test and Acceptance - IT personnel people can present the results of the configuration work to
accountants in an understandable format

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l Proof - Accountants in charge of verifying the configuration of the system are provided with tools
to visualize how the rules are actually functioning,
l Reference - Accountants (particularly if they are new to the company, or to the profession) can
gain a better view of the operation of the system, and make the connection between accounting
principles, rules and regulations, and what is actually going on.

PassPort
PassPort provides identity and access management services, including SSO and user access audit
functionality, as well as security services including PKI functionalities such as certificate and key
management, certificate revocation list management, or data security (authentication, privacy,
integrity, non-repudiation). As a user management service, PassPort can use built-in features as well
as integrate LDAP directories. PassPort can provide these services as a centralized server even for
products that have their own user and security administration in standalone mode.

Sentinel
Sentinel provides visibility to enterprise data that flows through Axway products and other connected
systems.

Visibility functions include tracking, monitoring, and alerting.

In AI Suite, Sentinel provides visibility in the following areas:

l Message-processing lifecycle information
l System status information
l Business visibility – Information from the business data flows can be collected and displayed to
the user in a dashboard or as key performance indicators (KPI)

Composer
Composer is a graphical user interface in which you define, test, and deploy sets of parameters.

The purpose of Composer is to:

l Design and verify the configuration of the set of objects required to implement data integration
and exchanges.
o Folders and user access rights
o Axway servers and broadcast parameters
o The dynamic, integration layer of the software
o Data masks and functions
l Deploy – Transfer objects to and from the runtime environment
l Manage deployment on multiple servers

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In AI Suite, Composer enables you to design the following objects:

l File formats
l Accounting rules
l Internal tables
l Integration-Processes
l Maps
l Business Processes

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How the products work
together 2
The AI Suite products work together to process business events and bring visibility into the
accounting flows of data through your integration infrastructure.

l The AI Suite products can be combined in different ways to match your application requirements:
o Batch processing – Integrate each step of the accounting processes to your infrastructure
through the use of scripts. For more information, see Batch processing on page 25.
o Event-driven control – Take advantage of the built-in event mechanism in the core
products of AI Suite. The Event Processor module, available in each core product,
processes the events. For more information, see Event-driven control on page 26.
l PassPort provides a centralized repository used by Axway products to manage user access and
security. For more information, see Access management on page 29.
l Each product sends event processing information to Sentinel allowing end-to-end visibility on
message information: both metadata and relevant content information. For more information,
see Visibility on page 30.
l During the configuration phase:
o Composer is used to design formats and accounting rules that are deployed in the
repository and used by AccountingIntegrator, Datastore and InterPlay.
o A Web tool, Designer, is used to configure InterPlay and Datastore.
For more information, see Configuration design on page 31.

Data flows
The AI Suite products can be combined in different ways to create architectures that suit the needs of
the application to be built. The choice of architecture depends on the functions to integrate, the
required performance and scalability, and the infrastructure constraints.

Data flows in AI Suite consist of:

l Batch processing – Manage the generation of accounting entries using custom scripts. For more
information, see Batch processing on page 25.
l Event-driven control – Trigger actions within the AI Suite products through events. For more
information, see Event-driven control on page 26.

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Batch processing
Batch processing is commonly used in accounting applications to generate accounting entries at the
end of the day from input events received during the day.

The following diagram illustrates how the AI Suite products work together in this context:

l In the accounting transformation system, a scheduler launches the execution of the

AccountingIntegrator Rule Engine program. The Rule Engine program is provided as a batch
executable that transforms input files into accounting entry files, as well as rejects files, audit trail
files, and report files.
o Rejects files are imported to InterPlay for manual correction. Then, the corrected files are
exported for reprocessing by the Rule Engine.
o Audit files are imported to Datastore or sent to the Sampler to create a file for AI Suite
Studio. Users will use the Datastore user interface to perform queries and navigate end-
to-end in the audit trail. They will use AI Suite Studio to document methods, events and
products.
o Report files generated by the Rule Engine provide additional details on the
transformation, such as logs, statistics, monitoring, and business events. Using the Event
Router, events are sent to Sentinel to allow operators to monitor the rule engine
activities.
l When the Rule Engine produces a reject file, the file is either imported to InterPlay using a script
or put in a shared folder. InterPlay monitors the shared folder and when it detects the incoming
file, it imports it. The user performs manual corrections and sets the status of the file to ready.
A scheduled procedure exports the files with status ready from InterPlay, then transfer them as
input of the Rule Engine.
l After a Rule Engine session, the audit files are either imported to Datastore using a script, or put
in a shared folder. Datastore monitors the shared folder and when it detects the incoming files, it
imports them.

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2 How the products work together

l Audit files are also sent to the Sampler. The Sampler builds a Sampled Event File, keeping a single
block of data per type of event. AI Suite Studio then displays the output in a UI showing the
documentation of methods, events and products, in a way that is accessible to both IT people
and accountants.
l InterPlay and Datastore request PassPort to authenticate the users and to control their privileges.
They notify Sentinel of the main events that occur: user logging, import/export, and so on.

Event-driven control
The core products of AI Suite can be triggered by three types of events:

l File event – A file event is triggered when files with a name matching a defined list of patterns are
stored in a folder.
l Time event – An event is triggered at a certain scheduled time.
l REST event – A REST event is triggered by a given REST call executed on a component.

The Event Processor module, available in each core product, processes events by applying rules that
execute actions when activated by the events. Examples of actions are: applying an accounting
transformation on a file, importing a file to InterPlay or Datastore, exporting files from InterPlay or
Datastore, moving a file to a folder, or sending a REST event.

The rule execution generates result objects that are also processed by the Event Processor. For
instance, applying an accounting transformation on a file will generate one result object per
generated files -reject, output, or audit. A rule on a reject result object can send an event to InterPlay
to import the file allowing a user to correct it manually.

The following diagram illustrates how the AI Suite products work together when controlled by events:

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2 How the products work together

The following describes of a typical scenario:

Accounting Transformation
1. An input file and a meta property file arrive in a folder that is monitored by the Rule Engine Server
component of AccountingIntegrator.
2. A File event is generated and processed by the Event Processor of the Rule Engine Server. The
Event Processor triggers a rule to process the file.
3. The Rule Engine Server selects an available Rule Engine or creates a new one. The meta
properties are used to identify the flow and the accounting rules that must be used. The available
Rule Engine is configured accordingly. The configuration is found in the repository.
4. The Rule Engine processes the input file and generates various type of files:
l Output files containing the accounting entries that will be posted to the General ledger
and other financial systems
l A reject file containing the input data that have errors
l Audit files containing the traces of the transformations that have been performed by the
Rule Engine
l Reports that log information on the transformation process
5. Result objects are generated and processed by the Event Processor of the Rule Engine Server.
Rules are executed to handle the reject file, the output files and the audit files. For instance, a
REST event is sent to InterPlay and Datastore to import the reject file and audit files respectively.
Correction of errors
1. InterPlay receives a File event that is processed by the Event Processor of InterPlay. A rule is
executed to import the file.
2. A user manually corrects the errors in the file using the InterPlay user interface, then set the
status of the file to ready.
3. A Time event is generated every 10 minutes. This event is processed by the Event Processor that
triggers a rule to export all files with status ready and generates a meta property file. The file is
stored in a folder that is monitored by the Rule Engine Server.
4. The Rule Engine Server processes the input file.
Storage of Audit traces
1. Datastore receives a File event that is processed by the Event Processor of Datastore. A rule is
executed to import the file.
2. Business users use the Datastore user interface to navigate into the audit trail.
Visibility
1. Each product sends events to Sentinel representing its activities.
2. Using the Sentinel user interface, the operator monitors the execution of the flow through
dedicated queries and dashboards.
Security
1. The user interfaces of Datastore and InterPlay access PassPort to authenticate the users and
verify their privileges.

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2 How the products work together

2. Rule Engine Server, Datastore, and InterPlay authenticate and verify the privileges of the user
that calls the API to process the operations.

Flow management rules can be defined to implement custom scenarios. The flow management rules
are defined in the Designer and stored in the repository. The Event Processor installed in each product
accesses the repository to update its configuration.

The Event Processor installed in each product stores the flow events that have been triggered in the
repository database. Using the administration tool, it is possible to follow the executed flows from end
to end across the products.

The event-driven control architecture provides a way to handle simple flows involving mainly the AI
Suite core products. At runtime, each product is configured to execute its portion of the flow.

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Access management
PassPort provides identity and access management services for AI Suite.

When a user attempts an action requiring authorization (logging on for example), the product sends a
request to PassPort through the API. PassPort approves or denies the request and responds so that
the user can either perform the action, or is blocked.

InterPlay and Datastore provide a fine-grained level of control on the user rights. InterPlay and
Datastore publish resources on which the administrator can authorize or not actions under specific
conditions. For instance, a user can be entitled to only view data entries that have been created by his
working group and that have a given status. InterPlay and Datastore also allow user-defined
resources to create authorizable properties.

The following diagram provides a high-level view of the use of PassPort for user access.

Figure 1. Access management overview

PassPort also provides a single sign-on (SSO) functionality that enables users to log on just once for
multiple Axway products.

In addition, SSO provides connectivity to SiteMinder for integration with an existing enterprise SSO
solution and extensions to integrate with other enterprise SSO solutions.

SSO in PassPort provides:

l A unified interface to end users across Axway products and extensible to third-party applications
l Central configuration and management of identities and access-control policies
l A way to leverage existing enterprise SSO solutions

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PassPort supports two SSO modes:

l Reverse-proxy mode
l Central Authentication Service (CAS) mode

CAS mode provides superior performance, but the SSO agent cannot be deployed in the DMZ as with
reverse proxy mode. InterPlay and Datastore are compatible with both SSO modes.

Visibility
Sentinel provides visibility services which enable you to track technical, functional, and business
events and show them in an easy-to-understand way. It provides:
l Visibility – Optimizes processes, for example, alert management, SLAs and reduces problem
resolution time and costs. It also enables you to drill down to the technical details to determine,
for example, where an expected file is blocked or delayed.
l Intelligence – Aggregates business metrics with a correlation rules engine, and processes
monitored data to define and initiate actions automatically.
l Traceability – Monitors all of your operations, including current and historical activity. It captures
system-level changes as audit events and stores them for regulatory compliance. It also enables
you to locate specific transactions using ascending and descending audit trail capabilities.
l Centralization – Provides a single, global view of your operations and business processes.

It is recommended to include Event Router and Universal Agent in your implementation architecture
to extend the scope of visibility.

Event Router provides the following functions:

l Event buffering
l Throttling
l Routing
l Filtering

Universal Agent enables third-party applications to send events to Sentinel.

The following describes the flow of events to Sentinel in AI Suite.

1. Each of the products involved in the data flow publishes events to Sentinel.
AccountingIntegrator, InterPlay and Datastore, send processing information regarding the steps
executed, their status, duration, and so on.
2. In parallel, it is also possible to send business-oriented information such as the amount of the
order, or the purchase order number. This information can be customized and modified by each
user depending on the information they want to publish to Sentinel.
3. The user creates requests to visualize the information stored in Sentinel. Typically these are
requests to search for specific messages or documents, or to look for all transfers in error.
4. The user creates dashboards to provide KPI information or SLA information such as the number
of orders processed per day per customer.

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5. The user can create correlation rules to detect any notifications sent by the various products and
reroute them to any third-party tool or execute user-defined actions.

Configuration design
AI Suite provides configuration design tools such as Composer and Designer:
l Composer – Can be used to configure AccountingIntegrator and Sentinel. Composer is also used
to set up the Sentinel server and to import Tracked Objects for those products. For more
information, see With Composer on page 31.
l Designer – Used to configure InterPlay and Datastore. For more information, see With Designer
on page 32
Configuration operations for other products are performed in real-time because their user interfaces
are connected directly to the runtime environment.

With Composer
In Composer, you can create and update a dynamic Axway product configuration. You then broadcast
the configuration to an Axway server (the development environment) for testing and validation.

After your configuration is validated in the development environment, you export your configuration
to a container. This container holds all the dynamic runtime configuration information and an
attributes.xml file that contains all the data specific to the environment such as the host name,
IP port, URL to the database, and so on. The container can then be deployed to test the production
environments.

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AccountingIntegrator provides an alternate deployment mechanism that is illustrated in the following

diagram:

In Composer, the user develops formats and accounting rules, and then deploys the configuration to
the repository that stores all the runtime configuration for AccountingIntegrator, Datastore, and
InterPlay. External referential tables can also be imported to the repository and associated to a given
configuration. At execution time, when the Rule Engine Server receives a request to process an input
file, it looks into the repository to find the needed configuration and uses it to setup a Rule Engine.

The entire deployed configuration can be exported from the development repository, then imported
to another repository in another environment.

With Designer
Designer is a Web tool used to configure InterPlay and Datastore.

The formats of the data that are processed by the AccountingIntegrator Rule Engine, stored in
Datastore, and modified in InterPlay, are previously configured in Composer and Designer.

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The following diagram illustrates the interaction between Composer and Designer, and the global
usage of the configuration.

1. In Composer, the user creates the formats of the file to process and the accounting rules to
generate the accounting entries. The configuration is then published to the repository.
2. The formats are exported from Composer and imported to Designer, where they can be
completed to suit the need of InterPlay and Datastore.
l For InterPlay, additional constraints or helpers are added to the format fields, such as
default value, possible values, minimum and maximum values, and so on. This
information will be used to configure the forms InterPlay will generate. The forms will be
used to create, enrich or correct data matching the formats.
l For Datastore, indexes and partitioning information are added to the formats to optimize
the storage and querying of the data.
3. From Designer, the configuration is published to the repository.
4. The configuration that is published to the repository is deployed to the Rule Engine Server,
InterPlay and Datastore.

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