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About generating connector rules

When you use the Connector and Metadata wizard to generate connector rules, the wizard generates a specific set of items for connectors of each type, as appropriate for that protocol or technology.

For external SQL databases, the wizard creates an external class and properties, rather than a connector rule.

Results

The wizard generates the following items:

For .NET, SOAP and SAP, the wizard also generates draft request and response data transforms that are called from the connector activity. Use the generated Request Data Transform to define the mapping of application (source) properties to connector request (target) properties. Use the generated Response Data Transform to define the mapping of connector response (source) properties to application (target) properties.

For SQL connections, the wizard generates the following:

For more information about which rules are generated, see the PDN document Creating Connectors with the Connector and Metadata Wizard.

Starting the wizard

To start the wizard, select Designer Studio > Integration > Connectors > Connector and Metadata wizard.

Resuming the wizard

This wizard creates a work item with prefix pxW-. To find open wizard work items, open the wizard as described above, and select the desired work item from the list.

Prerequisites that apply to all connector types

Before you use the Connector and Metadata wizard to generate connector rules, follow these steps:

  1. Identify the RuleSet and version to contain the generated rules — classes, properties, connector rules, activities, and so on.
  2. Identify or create the following class rules to use for the generated rules.
  3. Review the class rules you created or identified. Confirm that they allow subclassing and allow rules to be added to the RuleSet you identified

Prerequisites for specific connector types

Additional setup tasks vary according to the type of connector you want to create. Following are checklists for each connector type.

For EJB connectors (Rule-Connect-EJB):
  1. Create a JNDI server data instance (Data-Admin-Connect-JNDIServer class) that identifies the EJB container of the bean you want to connect to. If this JNDI server requires authentication, obtain a user name and password.
  2. Obtain copies of these Java classes:
  3. Package the Java classes into a .jar file.
  4. Add the .jar file on the Pega 7 Platform class paths. For instructions, see the PDN article About the PRPC class paths.
For Java connectors (Rule-Connect-Java):
  1. Obtain a copy of the Java class file.
  2. Add the Java class to the Pega 7 Platform class paths. For instructions, For help with this step, see PDN article About the Process Commander class paths.
For SQL:
  1. In the external database, create or identify a database user account for Pega 7 Platform access.
  2. Make the appropriate JDBC driver available to the application server running Pega 7 Platform. Then create a JDBC data source for the database in the application server.
  3. Create a database name instance (Data-Admin-DB-Name) that identifies the external database

Notes

If errors occur during processing, the wizard may create a connect rule with availability set to Draft/No. In this case, review and save the generated rules to isolate the source of the error; change the availability to Yes before testing.

If your WSDL file or XSD changes after you've generated a connector, you can regenerate only the changed classes, properties, and so on. For an example, see PDN article How to manage changes to WSDL and XSD metadata in SOAP connectors using RuleSet Versioning.