The Reflector is a collaborative XML testing and monitoring intermediary or portal. It is used to establish, validate, test, monitor and manage the connection and business-to-business transactions between trading partners.
The Reflector provides business trading partners with the ability to:
Initial deployments have resulted in estimated time savings of over thirty-five percent in the testing cycle - time saved which translates to accelerated connectivity with trading partners.
The Reflector supports the use and maintenance of any valid XML Document Type Definitions (DTD) or Schema. Each processed document is validated against the specified XML DTD or Schema. This includes the ability to validate baseline standard business documents, such as OAGIS and RosettaNet, or versions extended by industry consortia, individual companies or trading partners.
The Reflector enables system testing of business documents, independent of trading partners. This eliminates the need to synchronize and coordinate testing between buyer and supplier organizations, allowing partners to proceed separately, at speed. Each can test agreed-upon business documents independently, as many times as needed. By supporting independent and repeatable test sequences, the Reflector significantly reduces the elapsed time typically consumed in the test cycle between trading partners, and eliminates delays caused by geographic or time zone differences.
Every transaction between trading partners is recorded and time-stamped by the Reflector and made visible via a browser. Thus all partners collaborating on testing a scenario can see the results of successful or failed transaction instances. The Reflector illuminates mistakes in transmission, envelope, content and transaction sequence, facilitating communication and collaborative development. It tracks and uniquely identifies instances of the same transaction types that are running concurrently, enabling visualization of complex transactions.
The Reflector provides a repeatable test environment for system retest and supplier qualification. After modifications, corrections or enhancements have been made to a trading system, the Reflector's store of archived XML transactions can be used to retest the processing of changed business documents. This reduces compliance test time with the new characteristics of the application, particularly during synchronized testing among partners. The store can also be used to qualify new partner's IT infrastructure to assure that it can accept and receive already validated XML transactions. New partners can use stored transactions in the Reflector to independently self qualify prior to a final synchronized test, allowing the host to reduce cost and expedite the connection to large numbers of trading partners.
The Reflector generates detailed error messages for documents that fail to meet the specified criteria. Each is a precise, line-level, plain-English explanation describing exactly where the document failed. This provides the user with the information needed to quickly correct and resend the document.