Introduction

The File Interoperability Service (FIS) provides the means for performing bulk operations in an ImageMaster environment. FIS will generally be used in a batch processing context where several automated steps are controlled by a scheduler. In such a scenario, which for historic reasons is sometimes also denoted as “COLD processing”, input files are delivered to FIS by upstream systems or output files are delivered by FIS to downstream systems. Functionality to transfer files is supported by ImageMaster Batch Processing [SM Batch Processing].

Two modes of processing can be distinguished: import with pre-processing and export with post-processing. These steps are generally subject to customization and will not be covered here. Focus within this manual is put on the core interface of FIS, and it is described in particular, what kind of input is expected and what kind of output is generated:

Figure 589: FIS in an overall usage scenario

Several components are part of a FIS environment:

  • the ImageMaster Web Service (which in turn makes use of the internal ImaIntegrationService API)

  • the command line interface to start a FIS process via a command or a script in a shell

  • the file system, which serves as input and output interface for import and export

FIS internally relies on the services for archiving, querying, retrieving and deleting as described in the Integration Service manual [SM IS]. The Integration Services, however, can be deployed on a separate platform. FIS configuration is handled by the AdminClient, see section FIS configuration in [UM AdminClient], yet specific connection parameters in console mode may also be defined in a configuration file. This documentation covers the file system and command line interface with related maintenance topics.

Important note!

There are XML examples in this document and readers are tempted to copy and paste from these.

Be aware: Copy and paste from an example in this PDF into a text file that shall be processed by FIS can result in errors due to the encoding of special characters that can get broken!