RosettaNet is the name both of a consortium of companies and of a set of processes and standards for conducting electronic business transactions. Activator supports two versions of the RosettaNet Implementation Framework (RNIF). RNIF 1.1 and 2.0 are implementation guidelines for companies that want to create interoperable software that execute Partner Interface Processes (PIPs).
Activator is the packaging and transport interface to the back-end PIP engine. The back-end determines what message is next in the PIP process, whether inbound or outbound. The back-end also can optionally generate message metadata documents and submit them to Activator. MMDs are interface XML documents that include metadata in the packaging of RosettaNet headers (preamble, service header, delivery header).
There are two broad categories of messages involved in the exchange of PIP business documents. These are business action messages and business signal messages:
A request is the act of initiating some aspect of a business process. A response is the act of responding to a request. Business action messages are used to implement requests and responses. The following figure shows a message flow.
Activator does duplicate checking for RosettaNet. The unique identification for a RosettaNet message is the MessageTrackingId. This cannot be disabled in Activator. RosettaNet requires that the PIP instance ID be unique across all PIP instances and that the MessageTrackingId be unique within that PIP.