iRecorder Reference Guide for SiteMinder Web Access Manager › iTechnology Overview › iTechnology Overview › iSponsor

iSponsor

An iSponsor is a dynamically loadable library that preloads at startup or loads on-demand when a request is routed to the specific iSponsor. It is a plug-in to iGateway. It exposes selected application programming interfaces (APIs) to iGateway when loaded.

Requests to an iSponsor specify which service it needs from iSponsor. The specified service includes the API, a set of methods instructing how the software should communicate with other software, and the parameters. iGateway invokes the appropriate methods and passes the parameters to the corresponding iSponsor. The iSponsor's methods return an HTML or XML response. The response is forwarded to the requester. An iSponsor can have a plug-in that sends data to a non-iTechnology application or device. The sending protocol depends on the application or device and is not necessarily HTTP.

All iSponsors implement two standard methods:

• describe

  Returns the sponsor's name and version.

• define

  Returns all the methods defined in the sponsor.

Also, each iSponsor can implement other methods to support the specific functionalities of that iSponsor.

You can create an iSponsor using the iTechnology Software Development Kit (SDK) or the iRecorder SDK. Use the iRecorder SDK to create iRecorders only. For more information about these SDKs, see the eTrust Audit Reference Guide.