System-to-System Developer’s Guide v3.0
Confidential Material 3 of 19
1 OVERVIEW
1.1 CUSTOMERS AND APPLICATION PROVIDERS
Generally, there are two types of integration partners, customers and application providers.
Customers are themselves users of a NetSuite product, and are interested in integrating their NetSuite
application data with that of an external, third-party, application’s data. An example would be a NetSuite customer
that ran an external, custom, e-commerce application, that feeds sales information (transactions, customers,
items, etc.) into their NetSuite account.
Application Providers are providers of applications and services to end-customers, who are themselves
customers of NetSuite. Application providers are interested in integrating their customers’ application data, stored
within the application provider’s datacenter, with their customers’ NetSuite data. An example would be a third-
party Point-of-Sale (POS) provider, that wanted to transmit their customers’ sales information (transactions,
customer, items, etc.) into the NetSuite accounts of their end-customers. In this scenario, the application provider
acts as an agent on behalf of our mutual customer.
Throughout this document, customers and application providers will be called integration partners, collectively.
Before proceeding with this document, you should know whether you are a customer or an application provider.
For more explanation on the difference between customers and application providers, please refer to the
Customer v. Application Provider document available with the NetSuite Developer Program Technical
Documentation, or with your NetSuite Account Manager.
1.2 DOCUMENT ROADMAP
NetSuite’s System-to-System security model uses several technologies and methods to ensure secure
communication and enforce appropriate integration partner access to user data. The following sections will
describe:
• Implementation overview that includes platforms supported by NetSuite, the System-to-System architecture, an
implementation checklist, and an overview of the implementation cycle.
• Step-by-step instructions for the creation of a keystore containing the client certificate
• Overview of smbXML and the DTD elements specific to System-to-System data exchange
• Brief overview of the NetSuite Single Signon (SSO) technology used to map accounts between systems, and
enable application provider access to a user’s NetSuite data
• User interface options relevant to System-to-System integration
