IBM Global Mailbox - Technical overview

The main components of Global Mailbox and the architecture for the components to work together

High availability in Global Mailbox is based on specific availability principles. There are some limitations to the high availability properties of Global Mailbox.

Global Mailbox is a facility for creating a directory of mailboxes with submailboxes and hosting them across multiple data centers. Messages are created by Global Mailbox for applications (on behalf of trading partners, as application users) and stored in mailboxes.

A mailbox is a secure document payload repository. Mailboxes are secure because there is a permission model that controls who can access which mailbox.

By creating a network of multiple data centers that host mailboxes, the mailboxes can be available even if a data center is not operational. Other data centers in the network continue to perform the transactions. Data, including metadata, is replicated between the data centers.

Mailboxes are have the following features:

  • Mailboxes are organized in a hierarchical tree structure.
  • There is a root mailbox at the highest level in the directory structure.
  • Each mailbox can have only one parent.
  • Mailboxes can be created without an owner, until users or groups and permissions are assigned to them.
  • Mailboxes can contain the following items:
    • Messages
    • Other mailboxes
    • Permission information for specific users
The following mailbox types are concepts that contribute to the operation between applications:
  • Traditional mailboxes - Sterling B2B Integrator mailboxes that are in one node, or instance of Sterling B2B Integrator.
  • Sterling File Gateway mailboxes are traditional mailboxes with advanced routing and visibility that is enabled by Sterling File Gateway
  • Global Mailbox can be configured in multiple data centers with replication of the data so that messages are stored in multiple data centers and are available even when one data center is offline or has an interruption in communication. Global Mailbox is an optional feature of Sterling B2B Integrator that enables mailboxes that can be distributed across multiple data centers.