GLU.Engines employ the concept of Connectors, there are three types of Connectors:

1. Inbound Connectors: These are consumed by Initiating Systems that send messages to the GLU.Engine. These connectors represent the GLU.Engine APIs.
2. Outbound Connectors: These are utilised by the GLU.Engine to initiate messages or calls to downstream Receiving Systems.
3. Inbound/Outbound Connectors: These interfaces serve as a bi-directional link to the GLU.Engine. This type is especially relevant for certain technologies like ISO8583.

Protocols, Connector Types and API Specifications in simple terms

At a high level, protocols provide the foundation for communication between systems, defining how data is transmitted and received. API specifications build on top of these protocols, defining how software components can interact with each other to exchange data. Connector types provide a layer of abstraction between the application and the underlying resource or service, enabling the application to connect to and interact with the resource through a standard interface defined by the connector.

To illustrate this relationship, consider the example of a GLU.Engine that needs to interact with a database. In this case, the protocol would be the specific network protocol used by the database, such as TCP/IP or HTTP. The API specification would be the JDBC API, which provides a standard set of interfaces and methods for the GLU.Engine to interact with databases. The Connector Type would be the JDBC connector, which provides an implementation of the JDBC API that is specific to the database being used, allowing the GLU.Engine to connect to and interact with the database through a standard JDBC interface.

While this example is specific to databases, the same general relationship applies to other types of systems and resources, with protocols providing the underlying communication layer, API specifications defining the interfaces for software components to interact with each other, and connector types providing a layer of abstraction for connecting to and interacting with specific types of resources or services.

GLU Connectors

GLU.Ware supports an ever expanding list of Connector types and Protocols and their associated payloads including TCP/IP, HTTP, SMTP, FTP, SOAP, REST, ISO8583, ISO20022 – SWIFT MX, ISO15022 – SWIFT MT, FTP, AMQP – Rabbit MQ, AMQP – Apache MQ, SMPP/SMPPS, LDAP and various Database Connectors including MySQL, MS SQL, PostgreSQL and Cassandra. GLU has the ability to rapidly add support for other protocols that clients may require such as MML, GraphQL and SAP or there DB connector types such as DB2 and Oracle.

The GLU.Engine is able to transform any supported Protocol to any other supported Protocol. It does this by un-marshalling all payload attributes received into a ‘GLU Object Model’ maintained within the GLU.Engine and it then marshall’s those attributes to outbound payloads using protocol specific content types as required. See the Marshalling and Unmarshalling pages for further detail on this topic.

The diagram below illustrates a Digital Channel Platform being an Initiating System that will consume an Inbound Connector (API) on the GLU.Engine. The downstream ‘Receiving Systems’ (Business Systems, Scoring Systems, Regulatory Systems and CBS) are all accessed via Outbound Connectors.

Source Systems that originate transactions, consume the Inbound (‘API’) Connector exposed on the GLU.Engine. The Outbound Connectors on the GLU.Engine will ‘consume’ the interface (or API) that downstream or Target systems expose.

There can be multiple Target systems in any flow but there is only ever one Source System for a particular transaction. During configuration of any Connector Interface on the GLU.Console, the user will define if the Connector being configured is an ‘Inbound’, ‘Outbound’ or ‘Both’. This categorisation is important in that it presents specific parameters and variables that vary between the ‘API’ and ‘Connector’ Interface contexts.

See the related articles below or use the GLU.Guide search tool to dig further into specific Connector types you are interested in.

Secure Communication

All connections initiated by through GLU.Engines built with the Integration builder will utilise the Java Secure Socket Extension (JSSE). Please refer to the Java Secure Socket Extension (JSSE) Reference Guide article for details.

This implicitly includes the ability to support:

• SSLv3
• TLSv1.2

For further details on SSL configuration on the connector – see Adding or Editing Connectors