Actor adapter requests
Actor adapters use requests to obtain data from external systems and, in some cases, affect data in those systems. These requests are configured in BMC Atrium Orchestrator Development Studio in either a Call Adapter activity or an Assign activity.
In a Call Adapter activity, the adapter request is defined by the following ways in the Properties tab of the Activity Property window:
- Static value: specifies the XML text of the request that you enter in the adapter's Data field, exactly as shown in the templates and the samples provided in the respective adapter sections.
- Context key: specifies that an Assign activity is used to create an XML document for the adapter request and assigns that document to a context item. The context item is referenced in the Properties tab of the Call Adapter activity. This XML document must be contained in <request-data> tags. These tags are not included in the XML templates and the samples provided in the respective adapter sections. You must add them to create a request that executes successfully.
Some adapters can perform more than one type of action, so you must specify the action in the Action field of the Properties tab.
For each adapter, the wiki help for Base adapters includes the available actions, a table outlining XML request elements, an XML template of the request, and a sample of XML adapter request. The Call-Adapter-activity and Creating-and-configuring-the-Call-Adapter-activity contain detailed steps about using the Call Adapter and Assign activities.
The following table describes the fields associated with each available option in the Properties tab for a Call Adapter activity.
Call Adapter activity properties with static value as the adapter input
Each adapter request consists of the elements shown in the Elements of an actor adapter request.
The complete adapter request is formed by the Call Adapter activity, which uses information provided in its Activity Property panel. The only XML content that you must provide is contained in the <request-data> element shown in the following figure.
XML sample of an adapter request
<target-adapter>target_adapter_name</target-adapter>
<peer-location>
<location> this | any | best | peer </location>
<peer-name>peer_name</peer-name>
</peer-location>
<request-action>adapter-specific request action text</request-action>
<request-data>adapter-specific request XML data</request-data>
</adapter-request>
The following table describes the elements of an actor adapter request.
Elements of an actor adapter request