Sterling B2B Integrator - EBICS Client Architecture and Key Features

The EBICS Client architecture and key features section provides an overview of the EBICS Client architecture and describes the key features of EBICS Client.

Understanding the EBICS Client architecture will help you when using EBICS Client in Sterling B2B Integrator.

EBICS Client is deployed over Sterling B2B Integrator and reuses some of the following core functionality of Sterling B2B Integrator:

  • Creating and managing trading partner
  • Managing digital certificates
  • Creating and managing mailboxes
  • Creating users
  • Running services and adapters
  • Scheduling business processes

The following diagram illustrates the EBICS Client architecture.

Figure 1. EBICS Client architecture
The EBICS Client architecture diagram displays the elements in the EBICS Client architecture. The elements are, Subscriber, EBICS Client application, Sterling B2B Integrator and EBICS Client Schema, Sterling B2B Integrator Platform, Subscriber mailbox, EBICS Banking Server, Back-end that is used by a technical user to upload payloads.

The following sections describe the components of EBICS Client architecture.

Subscriber

A subscriber uses EBICS Client to perform bank transactions. The subscriber or user communicates with the EBICS Client application using the HTTP protocol to send and receive messages.

EBICS Client Application

EBICS Client application provides a dashboard interface to enable you to configure and manage the following EBICS entities:

  • User
  • Bank
  • Offers
  • File format
  • User permissions
  • Order submission
  • Pending tasks
  • Bank key validation
  • Keys

EBICS Client application interfaces with Sterling B2B Integrator and EBICS schema database to retrieve and store subscription and order related data.

 

Sterling B2B Integrator and EBICS Client Schema

Sterling B2B Integrator and EBICS Client schema tables are stored in a common database to enable the EBICS Client application to access the following data:

  • Native Sterling B2B Integrator data in Sterling B2B Integrator schema tables.
  • EBICS Client data in EBICS schema tables.

 

Sterling B2B Integrator Platform

The Sterling B2B Integrator platform on which the EBICS Client is deployed.

Subscriber Mailbox

The Subscriber Mailbox provides a safe access mechanism to send and receive messages between EBICS Client and EBICS Banking Server. The following mailboxes are configured for each user:

EBClientOrderMetadata
The EBClientOrderMetadata mailbox is a common mailbox associated to all users. OrderMetadata associated with a payload is posted in the EBClientOrderMetadata mailbox for processing the payload submitted by a technical or non-technical user.
Download (Inbox)
The Download mailbox is used for posting downloaded response in case of HEV order type and unpacked data in case of download orders.
Upload (Outbox)
The Upload mailbox is used for posting the payloads.

When an upload (FUL) order type is submitted, the payload is routed to the Upload mailbox and the related OrderMetadata is routed to the EBClientOrderMetadata mailbox. The arrival of an OrderMetadata in the EBClientOrderMetadata mailbox, either for an upload (FUL) or download (FDL) order type, triggers an EBICS Client request workflow.

 

Back-end

A Sterling B2B Integrator adapter that can trigger the EBClientOrderPreProcess business process is used to submit orders automatically from the back-end.

 

EBICS Banking Server

The EBICS Banking Server is installed in a bank. EBICS Client communicates with the EBICS Banking Server application using the HTTP or HTTPS protocol to send and receive information about users, trading partners, digital certificates, order data, file formats, and order types. For more information about EBICS Banking Server, see the Sterling B2B Integrator EBICS Banking Server documentation.

EBICS Client consists of two major components: EBICS Client Graphical User Interface and EBICS Client Runtime. Both the components use mailboxes (Upload, Download, and EBClientOrderMetadata) assigned to the individual subscribers.

When a subscriber posts an EBICS request, the EBICS Client Business Process picks the posted request from the Upload and EBClientOrderMetadata mailboxes and based on the order type request, delivers the request to the EBICS Banking Server. The response received from the server is processed according to the order type and is posted to the subscriber Download mailbox.

The following diagram illustrates the components of EBICS Client.

Figure 1. EBICS Client components
The EBICS Client component diagram displays the components of EBICS Client. They EBICS Client Graphical User Interface (GUI) and EBICS Client Runtime. EBICS Client GUI consists of Profile Management, Certificate Management, User Permissions, Order Submission, and Viewers. EBICS Client Runtime consists of Order Packaging, Order Unpacking, Signature Processing, Transaction Logging, Transaction Management, and Transaction Recovery.

The following sections describe the components of EBICS Client.

EBICS Client Graphical User Interface

EBICS Client Graphical User Interface consists of the following components:

Profile Management
This component enables you to configure and manage bank profiles, configure existing Sterling B2B Integrator users as EBICS Client users, and to configure file formats.
Certificate Management
This component is responsible for the verification of electronic signatures (ES), identification and authentication, and encryption certificates or keys of banks and users.
User Permissions
This component enables you to configure and manage offers and user permissions.
Order Submission
This component enables you to process key management orders and bank-technical upload and download orders.
Viewers
This component provides a summary view of selected orders or order-related events and allows users to sign or submit pending orders.
System Properties
This component provides a summary view of the system properties values. An EBICS Client admin or EBICS Client super admin can update the values if required.
EBICS Client Runtime

EBICS Client Runtime consists of the following components:

Order Packaging
This component invokes appropriate packaging handlers and ensures that the order is packaged according to the specifications. It is also responsible for order data segmentation.
Order Unpacking
This component is responsible for unpacking the payload received from the EBICS Banking Server. Unpacking includes providing appropriate order response to users and concatenation of order data segments in case of downloads.
Signature Processing
This component verifies whether the required signatures for an order are available or not. If not, the Pending tasks page on EBICS Client dashboard interface is updated with the pending order details. When an EBICS Client user with pending orders (signing or submitting) logs in to the EBICS Client dashboard interface, the Pending tasks page opens prompting the user to sign or submit the order.
Transaction Logging
This component is responsible for logging transaction data in to appropriate tables in the database.
Transaction Management
This component initiates a session to communicate with the EBICS Banking Server, manages transactions between the client and the server, and processes the responses received from the server.
Transaction Recovery
This component is responsible for recovering failed transactions. The number of recovery attempts depends on the value specified in the bank profile configuration. The EBICS Banking Server maintains the recovery attempts count. The server cancels the recovery after the specified number attempts.
Mailbox

The mailbox component interfaces between the EBICS Client Graphical User Interface and EBICS Client Runtime components. EBICS Client uses the following mailboxes to store and process order request and responses:

  • EBClientOrderMetadata. This is a common mailbox associated to all users.
  • Download (Inbox)
  • Upload (Outbox)

Separate upload and download mailboxes are created and assigned to each EBICS Client user.

EBICS Client Schema

EBICS Client-related data are stored in the EBICS Client Schema tables. The EBICS Client Graphical User Interface and EBICS Client Runtime components access the tables to retrieve information about users, banks, offers, user permissions, and orders.

This section describes some of the key features of EBICS Client.

  • Managing profiles for users
    You can configure permission types to enable a user to access the EBICS Client dashboard interface.
  • Managing certificates and keys for users
    EBICS Client supports both Keys and X.509 certificate types for user's identification and authentication, encryption, and electronic signatures.
  • Submitting orders
    An order type defines the nature of an EBICS transaction.
  • Pending Signatures
    Depending on the configuration settings that are defined in an offer, multiple signatories might have to sign the order to process the order data.
  • Recovering Transactions
    Order recovery is an important feature of EBICS Client. For an upload transaction, order processing error might occur at the bank's end. For download transactions, response processing errors might occur at the subscriber or customer's end. Apart from the processing errors, transport errors might also occur.
  • Searching transactions and viewing reports
    You can search for orders and view the summary of the orders on EBICS Client dashboard interface based on a combination of parameters.
  • Tracking EBICS transactions
    EBICS Client generates events that are related to orders. All events are predefined and metadata is populated in the system. A user cannot define the events. The events are logged against an order ID and there are no stand-alone events in EBICS Client.
  • Restore Tables
    Archiving transaction data, such as order, event, and pending signature-related data protects critical data. Archiving conserves database disk space and file system disk space, which improves the efficiency of EBICS Client.

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