Set up the development environment
This section provides an overview of the development environment for business process applications, focusing on connecting portal applications to business processes. For details about building those components, see the following topics:
As you develop any of the various components of the business process application, use this section as a reference for testing the component.
Note: Portlets that use the business process engine APIs are not supported in this configuration as task processing portlets. See Development environment configuration for more information about WebSphere Portal support for these types of portlets.
Software requirements
The following software is used to develop business process applications for WebSphere Portal.
- Rational Application Developer V6.0
Provides wizards and tools for developing task processing portlets. This product is included in the WebSphere Portal product package.
- WebSphere Studio Application Developer Integration Edition
Provides the BPEL process editor for creating business processes and a WebSphere runtime test environment so you can test and debug business processes. This product is not available with the product package.
- WebSphere Portal and WebSphere Process Choreographer
Together, these products provide a runtime environment for testing all of the business process components. The following configuration is provided by the default WebSphere Portal installation, as described in the installation scenarios.
- WebSphere Portal is configured to the WebSphere_Portal appserver and WebSphere Process Choreographer is configured to the server1 appserver.
- Embedded Messaging is installed to WebSphere Application Server.
- The Human Task Manager application is deployed.
- The property HumanTaskManagerJNDIName in ConfigService.properties indicates the jndi name of the HumanTaskManager ejb.
In some circumstances you might need to manually configure the business process container for WebSphere Portal. See Configure the business process container for portal for more information.
Development roles
Business process development for WebSphere Portal can be divided into the following roles.
- Process designer: The process designer uses Application Developer Integration Edition to create the business process, including the control and data flow, the syntax of the input and output messages, and the semantics of the single activities contained in the process. The process designer must also define a Client UI identifier for each staff activity that should be processed in portal.
- Portlet application developer: The portlet developer uses Rational Application Developer to develop the task processing portlet, the process initiation portlet, and any other portlets used to support the business process application.
- Portal administrator: The portal administrator uses portal administrative tools, such as Manage Pages and Custom Unique Names, to setup the task page definition for the business process application.
In some cases, these roles can be shared by a single developer. Otherwise, information must be shared between the developers. The process designer must provide the following information/code to the portlet application developer.
- Activity specification:
The activity specification describes in detail the purpose of the activity,
how the input and output messages correlate,
the acceptable values for single entries in a message,
and the expected results for the output message.
This specification also contains the correct syntax of the input and output messages.
- Generated Classes:
There are two cases where the exchange of generated classes is required:
- One of the input/output messages is nested or contains complex types. In this case, the portlet must have access to these classes.
- The developer should create a process template specific process initiation portlet (in contrast to a generic one that allows to start processes based on different templates) and should use a generated and adopted Web service or EJB Interface to do so. If this is not required, the generic EJB Interface to create process instances can be used. In that case, the name of the template is sufficient.
For each activity that should be processed in the portal, the process designer must provide the unique name of that activity to the portal administrator. The portal administrator must assign these unique names to the according task page definitions.
- Activity specification
- Syntax input/output message
- Generated classes
- Message classes
- Process EJB
portlet developer
process designer
portal administrator
Mappings: Activity
Unique name
Development environment configuration
To test the complete portal-based business process application, it is recommended to set up a staging server that can be accessed by the different developers. When the development environment is set up, the steps in this section must be performed.
Existing portlets that use the business process engine APIs (com.ibm.bpe.api package) to perform their own process integration will still work in WebSphere Portal V5.1. If the code should be modified or new portlets should be developed with this API, the configuration described in this section should also be used as the development and test environment. However, the business process engine APIs are not supported in task processing portlets for business process integration in WebSphere Portal. To fully integrate existing portlets that perform processing of tasks, the portlets must be rewritten using the Task API as described in Create the task processing portlet. For portal applications which use the task processing portlets, the business process engine APIs are supported only for managing the business process instances (that is, for launching process instances or deleting them) as described in Initiating a process instance.
- The process designer develops the business process and unit tests it using the integrated test environment. During development he sets the Client UI identifier on each activity of the business process that should be processed within portal. When the process is finished, he exports the generated classes that are required by the portlet application developer and also generates the deploy code and exports it as an EAR that he deploys on the staging server.
- The portlet application developer first imports the necessary classes from the business process. After that she starts developing the task processing portlet. She can not directly test the portlet; but must first deploy it to the staging-server on a page that has the unqiue name defined as the Client UI Identifier of the activity. To test the portlet, the according business process must be started (using the Web client) and be processed until the appropriate activity is reached (either using the Web client or other portlets that are already created).
- The administrator can now add additional supporting portlets to the task page definition and also setup any necessary wires.
Process development machine WebSphere Studio Application Developer - Integration Edition
Test and debug business process EAR using the Web client
Add unique Client UI identifier to each staff activity.
Business process EAR WSDL (Unique IDs), JavaBean for accessing business process EAR
Staging server WebSphere Portal V5.1 WebSphere Process Choreographer
Human Task Manager
Business process
Portlets
Pages
- Deploy business process EAR, portlets, and task definition page.
- Test complete business process application.
- Debug task processing portlet.
- Create the task page definition that contains the task processing portlet and any necessary supporting portlets and wires.
Portlet development machine Rational Application Developer V6.0
Develop task processing portlet and any supporting portlets. Task processing portlet references the unique ID and JavaBeans for the business process
taskportlet.war supportPortlet.war
After all components of the business process application have been developed and successfully tested, you can deploy the components to a production server as described in Deploying the business process application.
See also
- Business process integration scenario
- Integrating business processes
- WebSphere Studio Application Developer Integration Edition
- Installation scenarios
- Configure the business process container for portal
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