IBM BPM, V8.0.1, All platforms > Authoring services in Integration Designer > Developing business processes > Building BPEL processes > Defining BPEL process logic

Locked activities

When a BPEL process is imported from IBM WebSphere Business Modeler some of the items in the business flow will be locked. This locking is designed to ensure interoperability between IBM WebSphere Business Modeler and IBM Integration Designer.

If you unlock and modify any of the locked items then your process might no longer be compatible with IBM WebSphere Business Modeler. When you try to feed the changes that you have made in IBM Integration Designer back into IBM WebSphere Business Modeler problems can occur. Therefore it is recommended that you do not unlock locked activities.

In creating BPEL processes a typical workflow involves iterative development between IBM WebSphere Business Modeler and IBM Integration Designer. A process imported from IBM WebSphere Business Modeler might contain activities that are locked. The locking occurs when you export the process model from WebSphere WebSphere Business Modeler. You can see which activities are locked in the canvas by right-clicking and selecting Highlight all locked items. Locked activities are highlighted and are displayed with a padlock icon.

In addition to individually locked items there are also "pattern groups". These groups are identified and defined when the transform from IBM WebSphere Business Modeler to IBM Integration Designer is made. The pattern groups are regions (not necessarily contiguous regions) of the flow that were artificially created during code export from IBM WebSphere Business Modeler. The pattern groups must be maintained in order to guarantee interoperability. To display the pattern groups right click in the canvas and select Highlight pattern group > pattern_group_name where pattern_group_name is the name of one of the identified pattern groups. All locked activities are part of a pattern group.

Modifications that you can make to the process without breaking the interoperability with IBM WebSphere Business Modeler include:

In the Properties view of a locked activity you will see the message "The element is locked and cannot be modified", where element can be "activity", "link" or "gateway". You cannot modify any properties of a locked element but you can add and remove sticky notes. This feature provides a communication mechanism between IBM WebSphere Business Modeler and IBM Integration Designer developers, for example an IBM Integration Designer developers might use a sticky note to ask a IBM WebSphere Business Modeler developer to make a specific change within a locked activity.

It is strongly recommended that you do not unlock activities. Once an activity is unlocked, and the process is saved, it cannot be locked again. If you make only minor changes to the unlocked activity you may find that the process can still be imported into IBM WebSphere Business Modeler, however there is no guarantee that this will be the case.

Any new activities you add to your BPEL process will be unlocked.

If you unlock an activity it is quite possible that you will not be able to import your BPEL process back into IBM WebSphere Business Modeler. However, if you are able to do so then when you re-export the IBM WebSphere Business Modeler model and reopen it using IBM Integration Designer the activity that you unlocked will be locked once more.

Defining BPEL process logic


Related concepts:
The building blocks of the BPEL process editor
Dealing with faults in your BPEL process
Work with XPath in the BPEL process editor
Work with micropatterns


Related tasks:
Adding an interface or a reference to a business state machine
Adding a variable to a business state machine
Adding a process application as an activity
Adding an activity to a BPEL process
Defining transactional behavior
Defining timer-driven behavior in a BPEL process
Enabling SCA events to be emitted
Calling other BPEL processes
Calling business services