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

BPEL process editor

The BPEL process editor is a graphical programming environment that you use to visually create and manipulate BPEL processes.

The BPEL process editor has been designed to simplify the construction of BPEL processes. The main white space is called the canvas and it is where you create your process from the objects that you pull from the palette to the left and with reference to the objects in the tray on the right. Below all of this is an interactive properties area that changes to display pertinent details about whatever object you currently have selected on the canvas or in the tray.

The BPEL process editor is divided into several distinct areas, each with its own individual use.

The areas are as follows:

  1. The navigation bar

    • The navigation bar shows you where you are in your BPEL process. The first breadcrumb on the left corresponds to the assembly diagram and the second to the BPEL process itself. Subsequent breadcrumbs correspond to activities nested within the BPEL process. You can navigate through the levels using the bread crumbs in the navigation bar.

    • When you open certain activities in the canvas of your BPEL process editor, the editor drills down to that activity. You will see a new breadcrumb added to the navigation bar and the canvas displays only the content of the selected activity. To move back up to the previous level you can either double-click in the canvas area or click the previous breadcrumb. In the previous screen capture, you can navigate back to the BPEL process bp1 by clicking on the bp1 breadcrumb in the navigation bar. If there are multiple entries at a particular navigation level, a list of the valid choices is presented when you click the navigation bar.

    • You can also use the navigation bar to jump to other levels of the BPEL process directly by clicking the entry you want to display and chosing the specific item from the list.

  2. The palette

    • The palette is the shaded area to the left of the canvas that houses the objects that you click and drag onto the canvas to build your process.
    • Hover over items in the palette to see a brief description of that item.

    • The icons are organized under several different headings that act as toggles. Click the heading once, and the icons will remain hidden until you click that heading again. This allows you to reduce the complexity of the palette and keep those icons that you rarely use out of sight.

    • If you work with the same icons continually, you can gather them into a Favorites folder. To put an icon in this folder, right-click the icon and select Add to Favorites (If the Favorites folder doesn't already exist, it will be created with the first icon added to it.

    • To hide the text labels once you are familiar with the icons, right click the palette, and toggle the Show Tool Names setting.

    • To increase the size of the icons, right click the palette, and toggle the Use Large Icons setting.

    Basic palette tools
    Name Icon Description
    Selection tool

    Use this tool to select individual elements on the canvas. Hold the CTRL key while making selections to select more than one.
    Marquee tool

    Use this tool to select multiple elements on the canvas. Choose the tool, and then draw a box around the elements that you want to work with.
    Zoom in

    Use this tool to magnify portions of the canvas.
    Zoom out

    Use this tool to shrink the elements, and thereby increase the size of the canvas.
    Create a note

    Use this tool to place a note anywhere on the canvas. You can then enter text into the body of the note to label specific parts of your BPEL process. You can connect the note to one or more activities in the BPEL process by creating associations.

  3. The canvas

    • The canvas is the white empty area in the middle of the editor that you use to assemble the activities to compose your BPEL process.

    • When you click and drag an activity from the palette onto the canvas, the icon beside your cursor has a plus symbol and you can decide where you want to drop the activity. When the cursor becomes a crossed out circle, continue moving the cursor until it becomes a plus sign again.
    • Structured activities (that contain other activities) appearing on the canvas can be expanded or collapsed either by clicking the plus () or minus () icons.

    • If your process contains structured activities you can drill down into these activities by double-clicking on them in the canvas. The navigation bar at the top of the canvas can be used to return to the enclosing activity or process.

  4. The action bar

    • The action bar is a miniature dialogue that displays beside certain activities when you've selected them, and it contains a series of one or more icons that are relevant to that activity.

  5. The tray

    • The tray displays the Partners, Variables, Correlation sets and Correlation properties that are associated with your process.
    • Partners and Correlation sets can be dragged and dropped directly onto the canvas. You can drop a partner on to the canvas to create a fully configured invoke activity that when executed, will call (or invoke) the partner. You can drop correlation sets within existing activities and further configure them in the Properties view.

    • To see the interfaces and operations associated with the partners, click the small gray arrow beside the name of the partner.

    • Click the dark horizontal arrow to collapse or expand the tray. Click the individual headings to collapse or expand that section allowing you to put those icons that you rarely use out of sight.

    Tray icons
    Name Icon Description
    Add tool Click this to create a new partner, global variable, correlation set or correlation property.
    Remove tool Click this to remove an existing partner, variable, correlation set or correlation property.
    Sort variables tool

    Use this tool to arrange the variables alphabetically. Once you turn this setting "on", then all newly added variables are automatically sorted alphabetically against existing ones. You can also reorder variables by right-clicking on individual variables and then choosing Move Up or Move Down.
    Add a local variable

    Use this tool create a new local variable. Local variables are created within individual scopes, and are available only to the objects within the scope for which the variable was created. This button is only enabled when you have a scope or collaboration scope selected.

  6. The properties view

    • This area displays properties that are relevant to the object that is currently selected on the canvas or the tray. click the tabs to the left of this view to toggle through the pages. Some pages display properties in tabular format, and you can add or modify these properties by clicking the appropriate cell and then interacting with the graphical interface that appears. Properties marked with an * are mandatory.

    • The contents of the page will differ on the activity or object chosen. In all cases, you can press F1 (or Ctrl+F1 on a Linux system) to launch a help window and click the link to be taken directly to the product documentation for more details.

Create a BPEL process