Scenario

This scenario represents a business situation in which your company is purchasing products from several different suppliers. We will focus on setting up a business solution by using Microsoft BizTalk Server 2002 to automate the procurement process that takes place between your company and its suppliers over the Internet. We call this solution e-procurement.

In this scenario you set up a purchasing hub for your company. The hub handles all the inbound and outbound documents that are exchanged between your company and the suppliers. For the purposes of this scenario, a business transaction between your hub and the suppliers uses four different documents. A transaction starts when a purchase order (PO) is sent from the hub to the supplier. Upon receipt of the PO, the supplier generates an invoice for that PO, which is returned to the hub. When the hub receives an invoice for an outstanding PO, the hub sends a payment to the supplier. Finally, the supplier sends a payment acknowledgement to the hub and the e-procurement transaction is complete. The following illustration shows the business transaction used in this sample.

E-procurement scenario data flow

The documents in this transaction are transmitted to their destinations over the Internet by using XML Web services created with Microsoft Visual Studio .NET. All of the custom components used in this scenario are written in the Microsoft Visual C# .NET (C sharp) programming language.

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