IBM BPM - Business Objects and Variables in IBM Process Designer

Introduction

In Process Designer, variables capture the business data that is used by activities in a business process definition or by steps in services such as integration services or human services. Each variable has its own type and scope. All variables you create must be declared before you can start using them.

Variable types in Process Designer

You can use the variable types provided by the system toolkits, such as the System Data toolkit, or you can create custom business objects, depending on the requirements of the business data included in your process.

During Process Designer installation, the system toolkits are imported into the Process Center repository so that each process application and toolkit that you create has access to a common system data. The system toolkits provide the following categories of variables:

Base Types

Base types allow you to create custom variable types called business object. A list of all the base types is provided further in this topic.

System Types

System types are provided variable types that cannot be modified. A list of all the system types is provided in the JavaScript API reference guide.

Table 1. Provided base types
Base types	Description
String	Allows alpha-numeric characters to be entered into the variable.
Integer	Accepts digits without a decimal place, such as 45 or 20.
Decimal	Accepts digits with up to two decimal places, such as 45.3 or 20.13.
Date	Allows date and time formats to be entered into the variable.
Time	Allows date formats to be entered into the variable as times. The user enters a time, and before the variable is entered into the symbol table, it is converted to and behaves like a date.
Selection	Allows you to provide a list of possible entries to a user, of which the user can select only one. A selection is a list of different values; each value is typed as a string. A selection variable appears at run time on a Coach form as a drop-down list or as radio buttons.
Boolean	Accepts either true or false as values. It appears at run time on a Coach form as a check box.
Structure	To use a structure type, you need to create a custom structure type and define its properties. A structure regroups business data that is related to the same subject. For example, a Customer structure might contain elements such as lastName, firstName, homeNumber, streetAddress.

Custom Variable Types

Custom variable types are defined using business objects. If the predefined business objects provided in the system toolkits do not represent your needs, you can create your own business objects.

Variable Scope in Process Designer

In IBM® BPM, all variables declared for a business process definition (BPD) or service are local variables.

Local variables are only accessible to the currently executing process instance or service. Because variables are unique to an individual BPD or service, you can use a variable of the same name in a nested BPD or service and there are no conflicts at run time.

Table 1. Available namespaces
Namespace	Description
tw	Top-level Process Designer namespace
tw.object	Access Process Designer JavaScript objects and business objects (variable types)
tw.local	Access and update BPD and service-level variables
tw.system	Access system features and functionality
tw.system.org	Access security functionality
tw.epv	Access exposed process values (EPVs)
tw.env	Access environment variables

Initializing Complex Variables and Lists

Before using a complex variable, initialize it by using a script like the following:

If the variable is a complex object

tw.local.<variableName>=new tw.object.<businessObject>();

Example:

tw.local.customer=new tw.object.CustomerBO ();

If the variable is a list, use: tw.local.<listName>=new tw.object.listOf.<businessObject>();

Example:

tw.local.customerList= new tw.object.listOf. CustomerBO ();

Assigning Data to Object

tw.local.customer.id = “C123”

tw.local.customer.name = “BlueMix”

Conclusion

In IBM Process Designer, we can create a custom business object by using a base business object or by defining a new complex structure. When you create a business object in a process application, that object is available for all business processes, case types, and services in the process application. If you want to share a custom business object across process applications, create or store the custom object in a toolkit. Then, create a dependency on that toolkit from the process applications that require the variable. We have learnt how to create Business Object and Initialization of Business Object.

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Java Integration with IBM Business Process Manager

Introduction:

This article walks you through the steps to integrate external services into IBM® Business Process Manager applications using Process Designer. It covers integration with Java and describes best practices for achieving the integration.

Overview

There are two ways for Business Process Manager to integrate with external services, one is the component bindings way, the other is the out-of-box connectors way. The component binding’s method enables the system to invoke external systems with various bindings such as SCA bindings, EJB bindings, HTTP bindings, JMS bindings, and so on. This is the most powerful method, but it is only possible with Business Process Manager Advanced. The out-of-box connector’s method provides basic integration capabilities with external systems. It's simpler than the binding’s way and can be used for all Business Process Manager Editions. This article will focus on how to use the out-of-box connector’s method to integrate with external systems.

The IBM Process Designer is the authoring tool used to enable integration with out-of-box connectors. It provides capabilities for lifecycle management of business processes, and also provides a set of out-of-box connectors to integrate with external systems. There are four different ways to integrate with external systems using Process Designer:

v Java integration.

v Web service integration.

v ILOG integration.

v Enterprise Content Management (ECM) integration.

In his article we are describing Java Integration with IBM BPM.

Java Integration

Java integration calls methods from a Java class and interfaces with most third-party Java APIs, thus supporting a variety of integration scenarios and giving you access to Java features, including published Java libraries and APIs. You should build a Java integration service when you want to integrate with an external system to retrieve, update, or insert data in order to complete a task.

In this section, we'll use a sample to illustrate how to use Java integration to call a method from a Java class. For the purposes of our sample, let's assume we have a JAR file containing a Java method that can output Country Names based on Input of country code. We'll import that file into Process Designer, then use the Java Integration component to invoke the Java method, as described in detail in this section.

Import external files

External files are images, style sheets, JAR files, or other assets that are part of Business Process Manager Implementation, but developed outside of Business Process Manager. You can add these external files to your process application or toolkit in the Designer view so that all project assets are included in the Process Center repository. Adding these files to your process application ensures that all required assets are available and installed when your project is ready for testing or production.

Before adding managed files, be aware of the following requirements:

ü  You must have write access to the current process application or toolkit to add external files as assets.

ü  The files that you add cannot be larger than 100MB.

You can add Hello CountryDetails.jar to the process application by doing the following:

From the project tree, select the + icon next to Files and select Server File, as shown in below.

In the Server File window, click Browse and select CountryDetails.jar in your file system. CountryDetails.jar is now part of your process application. When you deploy this process application, this server file will be deployed as part of the application.

Save the server file.

Create an integration service and add a Java Integration component

To create an integration service, do the following:

From the project tree, select Implementation, click the + icon, then click Integration Service.

Specify the name as Java Integration Service as shown in below, and click Finish.

To diagram the integration, click the Diagram tab and drag the Java Integration component onto the canvas, then change its name to Invoke Country Details Service, drag a Server script name to Log and wire the components together, as shown in below.

To configure the Java Integration component to invoke a Java method, click Hello World - JIC.

Under Properties, click the Definition tab, and under Discovery, set the Java Class by doing the following, as shown in Figure:

a)      Click Select and select the class.

b)      Select CountryDetails java class.

c)      Select the method String getCountryName(String) from the list.

To set up the service variables, click the Variables tab, and add an input variable CountryCode of type string, and set the default value to “IN”, as shown in Figure. Add an output variable CountryName of type string.

Define the data mapping for CountryDetails. Click Invoke CountryDetails Service. Under Properties, click the Data Mapping tab. To set the Input Mapping, select the variable tw.local.CountryCode, as shown in Figure. Do the same to set the Return Value.

To test the integration, click the debug icon in Process Designer, click Step, as shown in Figure, several times until you see a message saying "The service has finished."

Conclusion

In this article, you've learned about Java Integration with external systems in Process Designer. You learned some best practices for using the integration components to communicate with external systems. These integration components exist as services, so they can be reused in toolkits shared across process applications, making Business Process Manager Systems easier and more efficient for business process designers.

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