GISBSender Component

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The GISBSender component implements an GISB / EDM client.

Syntax

nsoftware.InEDI.Gisbsender

Remarks

The GISBSender component is used to send EDI or other documents using the GISB (Gas Industry Standards Board) / NAESB (North American Energy Standards Board) EDM (Electronic Delivery Mechanism) protocol.

When sending an EDI message, the client should specify, at a minimum, DataFrom, DataTo, URL, Data, and EDIType. The Post method should then be invoked.

Basic Features: GISB Versions 1.4 and above

Security is provided via the use of PGP. If you want to sign and/or encrypt your message set the SignData and EncryptData properties to true. The component does not itself implement PGP, instead it uses a

The PGP operations may be performed by an external implementation such as GnuPG or an internal implementation within the component. The PGPProviderType setting specifies which implementation is used. This property is only applicable when using an external implementation.

By default the external implementation is used, and component does not by itself implement PGP, instead it uses the provider pattern to interface with external cryptography libraries. A PGP provider is a simple module that allows the component to offload PGP operations to the PGP software of your choice. The interface is designed to be generic in its ability to include various PGP software and is limited to only the bare minimum capabilities required for a GISB message exchange. We include a PGP provider implementation for GnuPG which may be used as a reference to implement other providers.

A PGP provider is simply a class called "IPWorksGISBPGPProvider" that should have the following methods. The component uses reflection to access the methods of the provider.

    public void SetParam(string name, string value);
    public byte[] Encrypt(byte[] data);
    public byte[] Decrypt(byte[] data);
    public byte[] Sign(byte[] data);
    public byte[] SignAndEncrypt(byte[] data);
    public bool VerifySignature(byte[] signature, byte[] signedData);

The SetParam method is used to specify the parameters required by the PGP provider to perform the PGP operation. Although the parameters needed may vary in different providers, we expect the following set to be necessary. The reference GnuPG provider interprets the following parameters.

The following parameters are only applicable when sending data and PGPProviderType is set to 1 (internal).

The component expects the encryption to return an ASCII armored output and the signing to compute a detached signature.

Note: GnuPG is the Free Software Foundation's implementation of OpenPGP. It is free software and is recommended by NAESB (in version 1.6 of the EDM specification) for use in GISB/NAESB applications.

GnuPG is not included with this package, so you should download the latest version from http://www.gnupg.org. You might use GnuPG (or other software) to import your trading partners' public keys, and to import or generate a private key for yourself. These operations are outside the scope of this software, so please see the GnuPG documentation for details. to allow you to process the PGP data with a library of your choice.

TLS/SSL will also be used if the scheme in URL is "https". In case your trading partner is using a self-signed certificate you may set SSLAcceptServerCert or trap the SSLServerAuthentication event to accept the certificate.

After you Post the server will issue a brief reply. If the server indicates some sort of an error an exception will be thrown. However, the absence of an error message does not necessarily mean that the server was able to read the EDI data. The server may attempt to process the data after closing the connection; if it finds an error it might send a separate error notification which may be processed by the GISBReceiver component.

Extended Security Options: NAESB Version 1.6

Version 1.6 of the NAESB/GISB protocol includes extensions to allow additional security. Like the AS2 protocol, version 1.6 allows for the use of receipts.

To request a receipt, set the ReceiptTo property. The ReceiptType and ReceiptSecurity properties may be used to customize the receipt request; by default, the component will request a GISB-Acknowledgement-Receipt signed over an SHA-1 hash. The receipt will be returned in the HTTP reply, and will automatically be verified by the component.