4. OBI/BUY: the OBI buying server

The OBI Buy Server requires much of the same messaging infrastructure that OBI/SELL Server has, namely, the ability to securely and reliably send and receive OBI objects. The primary distinction between the sell server and the buy server is that the buying server must support some form of approval process and/or integration with the buying organization's back-end processes.

One of the approaches is to take advantage of the existing B2B support in Net.Commerce. Currently, Net.Commerce supports B2B shopping process by allowing orders placed by members of an organization to be approved by a designated authority (who is notified when orders are pending approval). However, this process is still entirely hosted on the seller's site. The Net.Commerce server installed on the buy side could be configured as a B2B store and when the OBI buy server receives a purchase order request it is mapped into the corresponding Net.Commerce order tables. This would trigger a notification to the approval authority (as a result of the B2B setup), who would approve or reject the order. Later, an OBI/BUY server monitoring the state of the orders would pickup approved orders and generate OBI purchase order objects. These OBI PO objects are then sent to the appropriate sell servers using HTTP POST messages on SSL links.